And now, a word about dinosaurs.

The studio where I’m now working has released their first game, Turok, for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The reviews are starting to roll in and it’s currently sitting at about 76 overall (out of 100) on Metacritic. This is probably a bit lower than I think the game deserved, although as with any critical review, the number doesn’t tell the full story. So what makes a game a 75, which is still a respectable score, and what makes a game a 90?

First, the easiest way to think about the difference between a 75 and a 90, in terms of review scores, is this: a game rated 75 is good, but it’s not the landmark game that you buy and tell your friends that they should buy too. A 90 game is generally the type that any gamer should play; it’s an important game in the overall landscape of video gaming, has merit in almost all ways, and often ‘raises the bar’ in terms of what future games will be judged against. However, a 75-rated game could, to some people, be a landmark but to others it may seem flawed in one or two ways, or it may not quite reach the newly-set bar in terms of quality that previous (90-rated) games have. It’s quite likely an enjoyable game, and is by no means ‘bad’. Often, a 75-rated game had aspirations to be in the upper echelon but fell short somehow.

Just for the sake of comparison, a poor game (roughly 62 and lower) is generally not worth playing, offers no redeemable or memorable features, and it’s probably a good bet that the development team knows it’s a turd.

I’ve worked on games that — with one exception (Pogo Island) — have hovered in the 75-to-80 score range. From those experiences I know why the games did not reach the lofty nineties, whether it was from short development cycles or features being cut or lofty plans made without any real way to reach them.

Another way to think of the 75 score is that the game, if granted a sequel, should allow the dev team the time and the knowledge to improve on its shortcomings. Sometimes the sequel succeeds, sometimes it actually gets worse (getting worse usually means the development team tries to add new features rather than simply improve the ones that failed). Ironically, the games rated 90 and up usually receive sequel treatment, thus putting the development team in a position to fail. When you think about it, it’s hard to improve on an already excellent title. If you think of great movies of all time, there’s a reason no one made a sequel to Citizen Kane or E.T., because any attempt to recreate that magic is destined to fail.

Where am I going with this? Well, Turok is a good game. It has its shortcomings. Personally I’d put it at about 78 out of 100; not far from what the average review has it pegged at. When you consider the studio went from nothing to publishing a game (and Turok is a series that was almost driven into the ground through perpetual bad sequels) in about two and a half years, a 75 is a very respectable score.

How to be a luddite

There’s certain advances in technology that are supposed to better our world in some respect. One is the mobile phone, which I’ve mentioned many times as something I do not own. One is cruise control on vehicles, which I wouldn’t even know how to engage. One is Pop-Tarts, which are actually kind of tasty in a trailer-trash, don’t-wanna-go-get-a-donut way.

Throw into this mix Facebook. I got taken down in its rampage across the internet, despite initially thinking it was lame and pointless. For a while, after signing up, I enjoyed it. Hey, it has Scrabble! But the last month or so I’m really losing interest and realizing my initial, cynical opinion might have been right. Most of the groups I joined, from “God Bless TNA Pants” to the “I lived in Logan Lake” group, aren’t really offering me any fulfillment. I have won one Scrabble game out of about twenty. I’ve even started deleting friends that have never sent me a message, or who I went to school with but haven’t seen in a decade. It was sneaky and fun looking at how people changed, but that fun’s gone. Basically what I’m left with is the equivalent of email plus Flickr, both of which I think are more functional on their own. On top of that, I have this blog, which is way more personal than Facebook (I mean, it’s garrettknights.com, how much more personalized can you get).

So my time and place on Facebook is probably waning. I’ll predict that, by June or July, I’ll delete that sumbitch and go back to my regular, troglodyte lifestyle of not owning a cell phone, using my four year old computer, not recording shows to my PVR, and slowly losing touch with whatever’s cool at the moment.

A Brief List of Things I’m Tired of

The phrase [noun] is the new [other noun]. This is printed numerous times in every fashion magazine - and I know, because my wife reads them and thus I read them too - that it doesn’t mean anything. It stems mostly from saying something is the new black, which itself doesn’t make sense because black has never gone out of fashion. Even worse, it’s taken away from the cleverness of my friend Tony’s band name, The New Black.

The constant overhyping of new Apple products. There’s things I admire about what Apple has done in the world of computers and product design, but lately their strategy has been to release not-terribly-useful products wrapped in a glossy candy coating. Not only that but one of the things Apple fans hate about Microsoft - its closed system, near-monopoly over certain products - is just as prevalent in Apple. While I like iTunes and the (wheel based) iPod, together they’re a stubbornly closed circle that offers consumers little freedom. I like Apple, sometimes, but people in my field tend to lose perspective in that they’re just creating consumable crap that no one actually needs.

People who insist we ought to buy a home, and soon. Really? Can these people also lend us the $40,000 down payment needed to keep mortgage payments - on an 800 square foot apartment - under two grand a month? The buyer’s market has come and gone, and I plainly refuse to spend 60 to 70 percent of our income just to pay for a place to live. That’s not a smart investment, that’s foolish and stupid. I cannot rationalize a $300,000 apartment as a “good deal”. I don’t care how strong the economy is, prices today are larcenous.

People who don’t hold doors open when I’m behind them. It makes me wonder if people were always this ignorant. When I pass through a doorway, I always turn my head to the side and take a peek if someone’s behind me, and if there is I’ll hold the door until they get there. I do it because it’s courteous and isn’t difficult to do.

Business men and women who spend their commute buried in their Blackberry. Maybe it’s just part of my anti-cellphone beliefs but I don’t actually believe business needs to be done at all times of the day. The economic world pre-cellphone and pre-Blackberry functioned just fine. It’s borderline self-important ego-stroking: do suits really believe what they do is so important that they have to do it outside of their offices? I’ll let it fly if it’s some teenager, because they’re inherently antisocial and rude. But a dude wearing a tie and Hush Puppies ought to shove his Blackberry up his ass and stop believing that organizing meetings is a lifestyle choice. It’s a friggin’ job.

The news. I like my celebrity gossip as much as the next person but it’s not news. What actor A or singer B has sex with or gets high on has no bearing on anything important. Neither is hearing about shootings of people involved in organized crime, or some kid who went missing in Barbados, or what some sociology professor thinks about a provincial budget. Opinions are not news. People go missing all the time. Organized crime is founded on violence. It’s entirely circumstantial and does not change our everyday lives. I don’t know if news was ever actually reported - I’m probably too young to claim that I remember it being different.

Yellow Balls

Ha! Boy I bet you’re wondering what is up with this post’s title. No, it’s nothing testicular. I’m referencing the start of the 2008 Grand Slam tennis season, as the Australian Open has hit the tube in High-Def glory. I got to spend a good part of the weekend enjoying a sport that Canadians are generally bad at (save for an Olympic doubles gold a few years back, and also not counting that traitor Mary Pierce). As usual, with my doppleganger Andre Agassi retired and making tennis superbabies with his wife Steffi, I’m not terribly interested in the men’s side. On the women’s side, my favourite, Maria Kirilenko made it to the round of 16 before falling apart. Guess I’ll have to get on that Ivanovic or Sharapova bandwagon for the rest of the tournament.

I really can’t figure out why Canadians are so mediocre at tennis. It’s not like there’s a lack of facilities here, and most people don’t even train in their home country, as they head to Florida to train in the sun all year. It’s also not an issue of cost, as a racquet and some tennis balls cost far, far less than the hockey equipment parents buy for their kids even though their kid can’t skate or shoot a puck, but little Timmy’s parents have been brainwashed to think that hockey is patriotic and Timmy’s dad didn’t make the cut when he was trying out for a Midget team so Timmy has to live the life his dad didn’t. Yes, I like hockey as much as the next guy, but I don’t believe Canadians have to be defined by it any more than we have to be defined by bear-piss coffee and previously-frozen donuts from a fast food joint that’s named after … a guy who played hockey.

Okay, with a rant out of the way, I also picked up (via a very generous cousin) Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii. If you haven’t heard of the Guitar Hero games, you have missed out on the biggest video game perhaps since Mario 64. It’s selling like the hottest of hotcakes, has been constantly sold out since its launch before Christmas, and has played a huge part in its distributor (Activision) knocking EA off its perch of top selling game company in the world. After some time with playing the game on “Easy”, it’s obvious that I’m going to plateau in terms of fake-guitar-playing soon. I’m getting older and my days of world-beating game skills are far behind me. I imagine in ten years I’ll have regressed so far that my playing ability will be limited to Windows Solitaire.

Oh yes, and on an unrelated note, today I fixed a minor problem with our dryer. I won’t divulge what the problem was, but for a moment, I was a Man.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to read the latest issue of Cosmo.

New Job Ultra-Micropost 9000

You know, there’s just not much to say about my new job. I’m still waiting to be set up with an email account and an account in general so I can log on to my workstation. What I can say is there’s going to be a lot of opportunity to do things that I never had the chance to do, whether it’s from a technical standpoint (developing on the PSP) or from a format standpoint (making landing pages for the web). More specifically, there will probably be a heavy emphasis on motion graphics and a lot of time devoted to creating themes and moods. My mind’s already swimming with ideas and I’m really looking forward to playing around with some of them.

Thunderbirds are Go!

Today, on the midpoint of my between-jobs hiatus, we accomplished something: booking our honeymoon. During the week of February 3, we’ll be headed to the Bahia Principe Akumal in the Mayan Riviera, for an all-inclusive week of eating and drinking all we can eat and drink. Yes, seven days of gluttony, with prolonged bouts of sleeping on the beach or wading in a pool. We will also check out some points of interest in the area (namely the ruins at Tulum), and a friend suggested we make a day trip to Cozumel too. It’s exciting, but I’m also a little nervous about flying, since I’ve never been on an airplane in my life.

I’m not really scared of something terrible happening while on the airplane itself. If it crashes, hey, that’s not anything we can stop. I’m more just nervous about getting lost in an airport, or losing our luggage, or losing our passports, or any of the other non-life-threatening but very inconvenient thing that are possible yet unlikely. Regardless, I’ve got to get over my wussy fears so that, with some luck and some dedicated saving, we can go on a trip every year. After the honeymoon, for our next trip, I would really like to head to Europe. Jesus, consider this your warning.