Reviews on John's Random Review

Random Review: Dead Rising 3

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:12:35 +0000

Way back when the XBox 360 came out (2006!), I did a review of Dead Rising. It was a great game, one of my favorites of that first generation of 360 games. When Dead Rising 2 came out in 2010, it was lost in a sea of other games, so I never ended up playing it. I did play through part of their free “preview” game, Dead Rising: Case Zero, but I never finished that either… When the Xbox One released a few months ago, Dead Rising 3 was one of the launch titles. I didn’t buy an Xbox One right away, instead I waited for the holiday drama to subside, and watched for people selling consoles they might have bought only to flip to people that were desperate for one during the holidays. And indeed, I did get a great deal on a bundle with an extra controller, Dead Rising 3, and Lego Marvel.

I Love my Surface!

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:40:36 +0000

I’ve had a Surface (RT) since the Surface launch day, and I love it. (Note: I am a Microsoft employee, and recently they did give each employee a Surface for primarily business use, with personal use allowed, primarily for evangelism purposes. The launch day surface is my own personal surface, purchased with my own hard earned money). Since buying the Surface, I haven’t used my laptop! Here are just a few of the things that I love about it.

Random Review: Lego Batman 2

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:01:25 +0000

It should almost be called “Lego Superman,” as he’s probably the best character in the game :). Most of the Justice League makes appearances in the game, but they don’t have much importance in the story, which is a shame. hopefully it’s a setup for a full fledged lego justice league game? (related: why is there no lego:Avengers game?!!?)

Easton and I have played through several Lego games now, and of all of them, this was definitely the hardest. In most of the other games, you have to learn how to move the characters. In the first Lego Batman, you also had to drive some vehicles, but that’s it. Lego Batman 2, you have to learn how to:

After Action Report: Tough Mudder Seattle

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 05:02:43 +0000

If I had to describe Tough Mudder in 2 words, the nicest version would be “holy hell”. If you don’t already know what it is, Tough Mudder is an adventure-style race. It’s generally 10-12 miles, littered with obstacles. And the obstacles are crazy.

Laura and I were on a 4 person team, “Birthday Cake”, as it was one team-member’s birthday. Beside Laura and I, the other two ladies on the team (Buffy and Erinn) are women we know through Columbia Athletic Club, the gym we go to. Well, actually, one of the ladies on our team is a trainer at Columbia, who Laura sees regularly, and who I’ve been working with once a week since the “spring challenge” starting in April. Anyway, back to the ~~race~~ challenge!

Random Review: Alan Wake

Mon, 30 May 2011 03:10:24 +0000

Alan Wake was one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time. The story was an actual story. Well, it was really a story about a story, in the form of a game about a story.

A lot of companies have tried to do some kind of “episodic” game, and of any, I think this game could have actually pulled it off if it had been released that way.

Random Review: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:17:49 +0000

The game begins in disappointment: you’re forced to install a console game. So before I can even do anything, I’m forced to wait 8 minutes. Great initial experience there.

During the install I’m forced to watch a dude on screen chain smoke the whole time. Some of the “hints” it gave during this install (emphasis/commentary added):

konami is not responsible for any damage resulting from misuse (misuse of what?)
this game is intended for use exclusively with the PLAYSTATION3 system. (no crap, really? is that why its only available on the PS3? where else would I play it?)
cigarette smoke has detrimental effects to you and those around you, particularly infants and children.
put litter in its place. dispose of ashes in ashtrays.
ensure that you play in a brightly lit room and sit as far away from the screen as possible (except sony makes this impossible, as I need to charge my ps3 controller, and the cord they give you for that is like 3’ long, and apparently the controller only charges if the PS3 is on!)
avoid playing when you are tired
be sure to take a 15-minute break every half hour
if you begin to feel ill, stop playing immediately

THANKS MOM, for the life coaching while waiting for your game to install.

Ben Avery Review #2: The Shotgunning Edition

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 05:37:18 +0000

Last year, Art took us to Ben Avery Shooting Facility to shoot some of his guns, and we had a grand old time.

In what has become an annual tradition, we went again this year during spring training. But this year, instead of rifles and revolvers, this year was all about: Shotguns!

Jim and Art used over/under Browning shotguns, and I used a browning single shot. We then each shot ~60 birds of trap shooting. Ben Avery is a huge place, with something like 18 trap fields, so the 3 of us had a trap field to ourselves. This was good since neither Jim or I had shot trap before, and we didn’t want to slow anyone else down.

Random Review: Torchlight

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:32:02 +0000

While Torchlight has been available for the PC for a long (long!) time, it just came out last week on Xbox 360 as an arcade game. And it is a great game! It’s probably the best value for an Xbox live arcade game so far. I can’t believe how much stuff they fit into that ~400 meg download!

It wasn’t the best story ever, but I thought the story made more sense than Borderlands! The side quests were ok, but I think I “broke” some by going through the area and doing something before I got the quest for it. There were other things where I swear I scoured the whole level, and the thing that was supposed to be there wasn’t there. And I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time looking when there was so much other stuff to do.

Random Review: Medal of Honor

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:11:42 +0000

This is one of the few sequels that doesn’t have a number or subtitle. It should be something like “Medal of Honor: Tier 1” or something, as the game was mostly following some Tier 1 special forces operators through the storyline.

Like the Call of Duty series, I played through MoH on the hardest difficulty (until I saw the “Tier 1 mode” or whatever that I didn’t go back through and play). But unlike recent CoD games on hard, I didn’t see any real “bugs” with the “good guy” AI. And the special forces guys in this game could shoot. While you, as the player, still have to do the majority of the work, the computer controlled players could at least draw fire and provide cover so that you could flank the bad guys. So for this game, I don’t have to write a version of my “letter to my idiot squadmates” posts. The effectiveness of my squad did make the game feel a little easier than CoD, but it did make me feel like a good player on a great team, instead of the great player on a crappy team. However, the game not being as hard didn’t make the game any less enjoyable.

Random Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:19:24 +0000

This is the (by my count) 7th game in the Call of Duty series. Of the recent ones (since CoD:Modern Warfare), this one had the best story.

It had a very interesting psycho-drama going on, with the main character being captured and interrogated by someone, causing flashbacks. The missions occurred in the flashbacks, not entirely in order, and interestingly, sometimes without clear beginning or end. I liked that. Several times you’d be what you’d assume 3/4 of the way through something, and then you’d see something that didn’t make sense, and you’d get shocked back to the interrogation. I thought I had figured out what was going on, but I hadn’t. I like it when a game keeps me guessing.

Random Review: Red Dead Redemption

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:05:52 +0000

Red Dead Redemption was one of the best games I played in 2010. Well, I’m finished playing it in 2011, so it might be the best game I played in 2011 too :). If you haven’t played it, its Grand Theft Horse, basically. Same developers, same engine. But the story in RDR was a lot more interesting to me than GTA was. I think when you set a game in modern day, you really have to get every little detail right, because people’s brains are so used to seeing that stuff, that you will notice if the cars are too shiny, or the windows don’t reflect right, and all kinds of other things just won't look quite right. But when you set a game in the wild wild west, not a lot of people are used to riding horses, or herding cattle so you aren’t going to notice little things that are incorrect.

Random Review: Assassin’s Creed 2

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:31:50 +0000

AC2 was probably one of the best games I’ve played this year. Most of the time sequels aren’t as good as the original, but this one was as good, if not better than the original. Yes, it was a little formulaic, and there was a fair amount of repetition, but I really liked the story. It had one laaaaaaame moment, but I’ll let it go and see if AC3 cleans it up. I thought the addition of the interaction with Leonardo Da Vinci was pretty clever. There’s also a part now where you kindof run a city in a very minimal way, so that was an interesting way to make money. Towards the end I had so money I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I wish there would have been something else to do with it :D

Random Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Thu, 13 May 2010 05:03:55 +0000

Recently, film critic Roger Ebert said (again!) that “video games can never be art.” He has obviously never played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It was one of the best games i’ve ever played. If I’m not going to say it was the best i’ve ever played, because it did have some repetitive things and some other weird issues. But this game is art. There’s no way it ***can’t ***be. As much as I respect Roger Ebert, he’s just plain wrong on this one.

Random Review: Ben Avery Shooting Facility

Mon, 03 May 2010 05:51:56 +0000

While in Arizona for spring training, my step-dad Art took my brother and me to the Ben Avery Shooting Facility outside of Phoenix.

Here's the panorama view from where we were sitting. I should have gotten a couple more shots to the left, though!

Here's the view from space:

The main 200 yard range is just eastnortheast a bit of where the orange dot is on the map. If you zoom in you can see what 200 yards looks like from space. Then zoom back out and see HOW HUGE that place is! It was awesome! Weather was nice, not too warm, not too cold. A little windy, but not so much that it really affected us at the distance we were shooting.

Random Review : G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:31:52 +0000

Just finished the game G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra on Xbox 360. The idea of the game was good. The execution was rather….meh.

The game is kindof a 3rd person top down/isometric shooter. but you have absolutely no control over the camera! In most of the games like this you have at least some control over the camera. you might not be able to rotate the full 360 degrees, but at least you can move it so you can see your characters on the frigging screen! there were several places in the game where you had to make a left or right turn to go around the corner. and for several seconds, you couldn’t even see your characters until the camera caught up with you! That’s just insane. Instead of having the right thumbstick control the camera, it controlled what you were targeting. I would have much rather had camera control and then use the left/right bumpers for target control.

Random Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:49:23 +0000

I really liked the first Ultimate Alliance, and the sequel fixed almost every problem/annoyance that i had with it. Ultimate Alliance 2 was, in a word: Awesome.

It’s a top-down action game with RPG elements, reasonable multiplayer, and comic book heroes (and villains!) galore. It has a good story with a great moral dilemma, which is (mostly) meaningful to the story. The pace of the game was good, the story was really good.

Random Review: Dine Around Seattle

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:44:54 +0000

During March, Laura and I hit two restaurants as part of the Dine Around Seattle program. From March 1 to March 31, a bunch of Seattle area restaurants do a Sunday through Thursday, 3 course for $30 special offer. Some of the places are pretty high end that you might never go to. Thankfully we found a good babysitter, so we’ve been able to go to two! If we hadn’t gone to AZ on spring break, we might have hit more!

Random Review: Overlord 2

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:08:04 +0000

The first few hours were very enjoyable, much like the first Overlord was. I didn’t see much new stuff, other than that the minions could have mounts that would let them get to other places.

I really liked the original Overlord, and in fact while i was playing it, Laura was pregnant with Easton. In one of laura’s first ultrasounds, easton looked just like the overlord, so that was funny timing.

Random Review: Ghostbusters (the video game)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:18:57 +0000

I really liked it! It had a few glitchy things at the beginning, though.

You’d think that if you were making a game about ghosts you would maybe maybe write your code in such a way that said ghosts don’t get stuck in the environment. Several times i’d get to a spot in the level where nothing was happening. All of the other ghostbusters are standing around, obviously waiting for something to happen. So i had to run around in the whole level, looking for that one stupid ghost that was stuck somewhere. On one of the first levels, he was stuck between a building and a car. Other times, having the ghosts stuck somewhere turned out to be very convenient, as it meant that there was one less ghost to deal with.

Random Review: Mirror's Edge

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:27:55 +0000

In haiku form:

mirror’s edge, the game
it is a jumping puzzle
and that’s about it.

Well, maybe it had other things, but i never found them. I just couldn’t get into it, because it was just jumping puzzles, so i gave up. I’d just finished Tomb Raider before that, and at least it had puzzle puzzles. And swinging puzzles, and fire puzzles and shooting puzzles, etc. There are just too many other games out to play something that pisses me off.

Random Review: Fallout 3

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:36:13 +0000

Fallout 3, by Bethesda Softworks is probably the best game I’ve played so far in 2009. Personally, i think the world felt a lot bigger and a lot more immersive than GTA4.

There was so much to do, and so many places to go, i found myself just wandering unexplored areas of the map to see what i could see. There were some great quest chains, and other not so great, but on a whole it was a great mix of RPG and action. There were some quests that were secondary that could be completed regardless of the main quest, and then there were a fair amount of “mini” quests that don’t show up in the quest list, but showed up as notes instead…which was annoying. Some of the mini-quests were literally seconds long: a dude ran up to me in the middle of the wasteland, and said

Random Review: Too Human

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:29:49 +0000

Very weird game. It ended in the middle of the story. It took me a while to get a hang of the controls and equipment, and then about the time i was really getting into it, a cutscene ends, and the credits start rolling…

The lack of any kind of in game map was a giant pain, especially in the “cyberspace” thing… which should have had a better name. I mean, to most people that word has a meaning, and that meaning is not “lush green forest”.

Much Worse Things...

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:47:22 +0000

I caught most of the “A Colbert Christmas” special last night on comedy central. The last part of the episode, a duet between Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello was the best part of the whole show. An awesome little song, with a very memorable, very applicable holiday song. Here are the lyrics:

Random Review: Root canal

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:56:36 +0000

Sunday night, i awoke in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. Or, toothache, rather. I couldn’t tell which tooth, or even top or bottom, just that the left side of my face hurt. I took some advil, it went away, and I went back to sleep. Monday and Tuesday the toothache kindof came and went but there was no sensitivity to hot or cold or pressure, and i still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Wednesday was more of the same until dinner time. During dinner, it got to the point that i couldn’t even chew on the left side, but at least i could tell which tooth it was. Wednesday night i barely slept. I probably got about 2 hours of total sleep in 5 minute chunks. Thursday morning i went to the dentist, they took xrays and said that i had an infection in that tooth, and that i’d need a root canal. I was given prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers and had to come back the next day for the root canal, as they want the antibiotics in your system for at least 24 hours.

Random Review: Dr. Horrible is awesome!

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:06:45 +0000

Go watch it. The third part is supposed to go live tomorrow (the 19th) and the first two parts are awesome. I love Neil Patrick Harris, and this is pure genius on Joss Whedon’s part as well. NPH is our favorite part of How I Met Your Mother, and playing himself in the Harold & Kumar movies is fantastic. So go watch it already. It would be awesome if they could turn this into a series of some kind, even if it was web based or i had to download it through iTunes or my X360.

Random Review: The most expensive meal we've ever eaten...

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:36:09 +0000

For Valentine’s day (weekend), Laura and I had dinner at The Herbfarm restaurant. It definitely gets into the “Top 3” of meals I’ve ever eaten, but does not get the top spots. It was the most elegant, well prepared, fanciest, and most gourmet meal we’ve ever had, though.

For reference, #1 is Steak for lunch in a tiny little family restaurant in Porvoo, Finland, #2 was J P’s in Cannon Beach, OR, the dinner the night before we got engaged. Interestingly, the herbfarm is #1 of the “non-steak” dinners.

Random Review: Howard Leight Impactâ„¢ Sport Earmuff

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:50:22 +0000

So i bought some fancy electronic ear protection from cabela’s to use at the range. I had searched some places and this “Impact” model fit my real requirements: has to muffle sounds, have to fit into the range bag. They also met my optional requirements: electronic ones that boost normal range sounds, so you can still hear people talking while you’re wearing them.

Howard Leight Impactâ„¢ Sport Earmuff @ Cabela’s

The year in review!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:02:10 +0000

I review the year’s best (imo!) TV shows, and Games! Follow the jump for the whole thing. Its a little long!

GRAW2 Review

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:19:27 +0000

When i reviewed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter back in March of last year, i said this:

The AI enemies seem to be a bit smarter than the AI friendlies though. it seems that the enemies will hide behind cover and fire, but if the friendlies are told to attack a target, they’ll move from behind their cover into the open instead of shooting over/around their cover. Some sections i need to just have them hold somewhere while i pick people off one by one. My biggest peeve is that if a teammate is incapacitated right next to them, they just stand there like a dufus and watch him die. Sure, you can tell him to give first aid and he’ll do it, but come on, you saw your buddy get shot! Hide and fix him already!

What do i have to say about GRAW2? Follow the jump!

Edward Tufte ROCKS.

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:36:35 +0000

This week i had the opportunity to go to Edward Tufte’s PRESENTING DATA AND INFORMATION seminar here in Seattle. It was fricking awesome (i believe that “fricking” is the correct technical term!) I’ve been getting the advertisement in the mail at work for years, but never had the time to go. I’m always on the lookout for things to go to for work to cover my employee development plan, and this was a great one. Not only do you get a day of class, you end up with all 4 of Tufte’s books, which i’ll add to my “Now Reading” list as soon as i find some time. I have 2 other books I’m actively reading as well (and coincidentally, they both have “Danger” in their titles!)

A little bit more after the jump…

Verizon FIOS

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:28:07 +0000

Today was my install date for Verizon’s FIOS - the new super high speed fiber optic broadband. Well, it was supposed to be 9/12/2006. Then it was supposed to be 9/14/2006. Then it was supposed to be today, then it was supposed to be 9/21/2006. Imagine my suprise when i got to work today and had voicemail from the verizon installer at my house…

Once i got home, a challenge in and of itself, the installer came and had everything set up in a few hours. According to speakeasy’s speed test, this is what i get:

YOWZA! For more details, follow the link!

MY Dead Rising Review

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:27:49 +0000

Awesome. The best game i’ve played since Lego Star Wars last year. Best story since HL2. We’ll see if Lego Star Wars 2 can top Dead Rising! Follow the jump to read more specifics, including some things i’ve found that weren’t mentioned in any of the walkthroughs. (nothing that exciting… :))

Usability Week 06

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:23:11 +0000

This week I had the opportunity to go to Neilson Norman Groupâ€™s (NN/g) Usability Week 2006 conference in San Francisco, and attend a 3 day usability training seminar by Bruce “Tog"Tognazzini, of â€œAsk Tog â€œ fame. The Tog seminar was titled “Interaction Design: Three-day Immersion”, and it was fantastic. Iâ€™ve been reading Togâ€™s “AskTog” website for a long time, so I was pretty sure it was going to be good, and I was not let down. More after the jump!

My XBOX360 is cooler than your XBOX360!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:08:05 +0000

Because my XBOX 360 is autographed by Steve Balmer! So there!

I won this autographed XBOX360 at a charity auction for Clyde Hill Elementary school in Bellevue, WA. It is the pro version, with an extra wireless controller and the media remote, and PGR3 and Kameo. HD Gaming here I come!

Reviews of the 360, Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, and the new Ghost Recon game after the jump.

naviPod Remote Control

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 03:42:13 +0000

I recently purchased a naviPod remote for my iPod, because I use my iPod every day at work. Because of the layout of my office, there isn’t a convenient place to put the ipod and control it. I used the Apple supplied corded remote for a while, but then when I took my iPod somewhere else, I had to untangle even more cords. I love having a remote, but I do have some issues with the design of the remote…