Xbox 360 is back!

Time for some Doom, Saint’s Row, and perhaps a little more Dead Rising.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

I’ve spent what I can only describe as a ludicrous amount of time at my office discussing defense about the coming zombie apocalypse. We’ve talked about everything from the ultimate zombie killing weapon to the best way to defend our office. I read most of Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide this weekend, and as a zombie enthusiast, I really enjoyed the book, I disagree with some of his advice.

He’s out of his mind about weapon choice, specifically the amount of ammunition to carry in a zombie attack scenario. If you leave your fortress with the amount of ammo he recommends (just a few hundred rounds) you’re going to have real problems getting back alive. He seriously discounts the zombie-killing power and potency of a .22 rimfire, which is perfectly suited for anti-zombie warfare. There aren’t many weapons that you can carry 5000 rounds of ammo without straining yourself, and deliver enough penetration power to take down the undead at 200 yards.

Brooks also neglected to mention the most fortress-like construct, available to refugees in almost any major area–the warehouse store. I’m sure he’s just saving his local Costco or Sam’s Warehouse for himself. Think about it, not only does your local Costco have an infinite supply of food, water, and even booze; it also has dozens of potential anti-zombie weapons, bedding, and outdoor clothing. They even stock supplies to help you make your escape, camping gear, bicycles, scooters, and weapons. Hell, warehouse stores even have generators and gas so you’ll have power to run the fridges and freezer sections. The building are virtual fortresses; built of cinderblock, with only a few easily secured entrances. They have roof access for perimeter patrol, and can easily hold several dozen refugees with plenty of room to move. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I’ll be at Costco.

The book is shockingly entertaining, though it does bog down by rehashing some of the advice two or three times for different scenarios (on the run, defense, hunting zombies) the entertainment factor picks right back up when Brooks gets into the (fictional?!) accounts of zombie attacks through the ages.

The book’s good. You should read it.

Franchise whoring ^2

Take two massive franchises and put them together, what do you get? One helluva fun franchise all it’s own. I loved the first Lego Star Wars game, and the second one is even better.
Sure, it’s really, really short. The graphics aren’t so hot. And, it’s a damn kids game, but I honestly had more fun with the goofy, too-short kids game than I have with another Star Wars game since the first Knights of the Old Republic.

Controlling a bunch of Lego-ized characters from Star Wars is a hoot. The first time Chewbacca leapt onto a Lego Stormtrooper and ripped his arms off, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. The same kind of mildly perverse, yet in-jokey and deconstructionist humor pervades the game. The game’s a budget-priced $30, and the cutscene with Han and Greedo in the cantina is worth the price of admission alone. Buy this game now!

Vindication!

I knew there was something up with the first few shipments of Xbox 360s. Microsoft’s repairing all the pre-2006 Xbox 360s for free, and refunding the payments people for people who had to pay for out of service repairs.

Here’s the quote:

As part of our standard and ongoing process of analyzing repair data, we recently noticed a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it’s a higher rate than we are satisfied with. We’ve made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, 2006, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs.

On Blogging…

I just now figured out the real benefit of blogging. For me it’s quickly replacing the journal I never updated as a place to organize and flesh out thoughts on different topics. Here’s a “for instance”:
I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to write this month’s editorial about. For once, the problem is too many topics, instead of the opposite (and much more frequent) problem. And, to complicate things further, I also want to write the “official” farewell to Josh (hopefully without being too sappy) this month too, so the topic needs to be short and sweet.
After writing up a fairly long post for this blog on the folly of dedicated processors for tasks that don’t really require them–I’m looking at you Ageia and Bigfoot–I realized that with a little tweaking, it would make a great column.

Let’s talk about Flock

I’ve spent the last few days either working feverishly on our Holiday issue or enjoying the media circus that Apple manages to attract at every launch event. While I enjoyed seeing rev5.1 iPods and am moderately interested in the new Nano, I still don’t understand why the mainstream and tech media shows up in such force to the Apple events.

Anyway, I wanted to talk a second about Flock. We don’t normally review free software in the pages of Maximum PC, since it’s easy enough for you to download and try out yourself. However, a few weeks ago, while waiting for Firefox 2, I decided to give Flock a try.

The main selling point for me was Flock’s del.icio.us integration. Many years ago, I gave up on using bookmarks in my browser. With the number of bookmarks that I accumulate, the long list of unsorted links that most browsers use is virtually unusable. Flock uses the links in your del.icio.us repository as its bookmarks. You can organize and search them using tags, share them with all of your other computers (or the rest of the world). It’s very nice, and makes large collections of bookmarks actually usable. It would be hard for me to go back to Firefox now that I’ve used Flock’s bookmarks–hopefully the Firefox team will roll the del.icio.us functionality into the main Firefox codepath.

Other notable feature include photo sharing site integration and the blog posting tool, which I’m using right now. The blog poster is rudimentary, but perfectly acceptable for quick’n'dirty posts. It certainly won’t replace Ecto or w.blogger, but it’s OK.

Photo integration–at least for Flickr users–kicks ass too. Flock includes a simple uploader and a photo bar at the top of the browser window. In the bar, you can see all your Flickr photos. If you want to link to one in a message board or blog post, just drag the image to the text box. It couldn’t be much more quick and convenient.

The Flock experience still isn’t perfect. Extension support is still fairly limited. The key extensions–greasemonkey, mouse gestures, and gmail notifier–are there, but if you use some of the more esoteric add-ons, you may be out of luck. I still miss the TinyURL creator every day.

If you want to give Flock a try, give it a download!

11,753

That’s the number of zombies I had to kill in order to finish Dead Rising, which is far and away my favorite Xbox 360 game so far this year. It’s a strong contender for my favorite game on any platform. Of all the games I’ve played this year–and the list is very long–ranging from BF2 to Oblivion to Titan Quest to Hitman to New Super Mario Brothers. I’ve even done a few things I didn’t think possible–I played Prey and I enjoyed a Tomb Raider game. But, Dead Rising hits all my buttons just right.

If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s fairly simple. You play a photojournalist trapped in a mall filled with thousands upon thousands of zombies, and your ride isn’t going to be back for 72 hours. You can use virtually everything in the mall as a weapon, from trash cans and benches to baseball bats and chainsaws. And it’s vital that you keep good weapons on hand–without them, you’ll have serious problems fighting your way through the zombie hordes. And I do mean a horde–there can be literally a thousand zombies onscreen at any given moment.

If that was all there was to the game, it would be good; but there’s more. Instead of zombie boss monsters, the many bosses you’ll face are human psychopaths. Each one has different weapons and strategies, and all require a slightly different tack. Defeating them frees other people and gives you access to other weapons and even vehicles.

To maximize your score, you need to take exciting photographs, escort survivors, and figure out what caused the zombie outbreak in the first place. When you finish the story mode, there’s plenty left to do, whether you go back and save more surviors, or just go out and slay all the zombies.

The save system initially frustrated the hell out of me, but I’m quite fond of the way it works and the way it encourages you to play the game. I’ll talk about it more when I can keep my eyes open.

Another one bites the dust

Back in February, my first Xbox 360 stopped reading discs properly, but five short days later and I was back in business. Keen-eyed readers might remember that I mentioned I was having some crashes in Dead Rising a few days ago. Tonight, the other shoe dropped, and the 360 totally conked out. Luckily, I still have extended waranty left, and they’re going to fix it again. Still, it seems more than a little ridiculous to have to return a game console twice in about 9 months.

Labor Day Weekend 2006

After the ball game on Saturday, we snuck up to my parent’s farm for a few hours. While there, we tooled around on four-wheelers to see what they’ve been up to, and also spend a little time with the water balloon bazooka. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to shoot a little video, but it is one helluva cool toy. It’s really not much more than an 8-foot compressed air-powered water balloon mortar.

Operation is pretty simple. Add a quart or two of water to the bazooka shaft, drop up to eight balloons down, add up to 125psi of compressed air to the appropriate chamber, aim at something you wouldn’t mind destroying, and flip the valve. The next thing that happens is a 10-foot waterspout blasts out of the barrel, propelling the balloons on a ballistic arc toward whatever you aimed at.

The war against chapstick

Two things of interest happened to me on Monday on my trip back from Tennessee to San Francisco. The TSA stole my chapstick, and I made my best ever speed run through the Hartsfield-Atlanta Airport.

Security in the beautiful and toothless Tri-Cities Regional Airport was surprisingly thorough. As I was boarding the flight, my carry-on was summarily searched, and the lovely TSA employee could confiscate my “gel-like” chapstick. There was a brief confrontation at the gate, while she explained that it wasn’t the “gel-like” nature of my lip balm that was the problem, but its container. Had I carried the exact same product through security in a tube, I wouldn’t have had any problems. Even more interesting, when my bag was examined in San Francisco two weeks prior (but still after the “foiled plot” in the UK), I carried the exact same tub of chapstick through security. The upshot here is that it’s really not about the “gel-like” substances, it’s about the power trip that the TSA thugs get from inconveniencing innocent travellers. Seriously, what’s the maximum chemical energy that I could have packed into a tub that holds 0.38 ounces of lip balm?

It got worse from there. My flight was delayed leaving Tri-Cities, and instead of the promised regional jet, I ended up herded onto a tiny turboprop. The upshot is that I arrived at gate D28 in Atlanta with 7 minutes to make my connection at gate A26. After running through two concourses, taking the people movers in the trans-concourse tunnels at a full-sprint, and in-general doing my best OJ Simpson impression–minus the murderous rampage bits–I arrived at my departure gate as the agent was closing the door to the plane. I made it from D28 on the tarmac to A26 in about 9 minutes. The gate agents kindly let me sneak onboard and I collapsed into my seat for the ride home.

When I finally arrived in San Francisco, it was with neither luggage, nor chapstick, but at least I made it without any kind of cavity search.