Annoyed

I don't buy a lot of games.

Mostly, I don't play very many games, although I've been playing Culdcept and Dead Space lately.

But I really wanted to play Portal, because I've heard it's so amazing.

And now, I'm about twenty minutes in to installing it, and it's nowhere near done, as far as I can tell.

First it installed Steam. I don't want Steam; I've never wanted Steam, it's a waste of time and memory and bandwidth.

Then I had to create a Steam account to even install Portal. This despite my having plunked down my money at a counter to purchase the stupid game. It tells me I can't access the games that I've already paid for without my Steam account. Which I didn't want anyway.

Fuck you, Valve. You're lucky I'm so lazy that I'm willing to put up with this shit this time. I won't be buying any more of your games in the future, though.

EDIT: I think the thing that annoys me most of all is that I wanted to just sit down and play portal for a bit. Instead, I'm still waiting. Console gaming is looking more appealing all the time...

Linkage

Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren't It.

Exposing the Game

Just wanted to point you all to Steve's new game review blog, Exposing the Game -- One Card at a Time. He already has two reviews up: Carcasonne and Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game.

Life Update

What's been going on in my life since the last update?

Well, we made it out of the apartment in time (though it was fairly close) with some help from my parents and Naveen. Didn't leave it quite as clean as I wanted to, but it was pretty good. The condo is pretty awesome, even though it's still, technically, not quite finished. The laminated-wood floors look really nice and the paint job is pretty good, overall. We LOVE having the extra room; in the condo, we have an actual kitchen as well as a larger living room and a second bedroom that we're calling the office (and which houses the computers).

Steve and Matt have been preparing for rush; Rik decided to become associate for a while because he was afraid the commitment would be too much to keep up with his schoolwork. I am, at long last, an alumnus (woohoo!) although the distinction is pretty much a technical one since I have to take Steve to almost all the events anyway. We have two very promising rushees signed up already, with a supposed 2-3 more from Marcus. Also, Florencio and (hopefully) Efrain are planning on coming to some events, as well as the regional governor, Robbie, for induction.

Denver Pops Orchestra and BrightonMusic Orchestra have both started up again, good in that I enjoy both, but bad in that I once again have a regular schedule that I must follow. DPO has a bunch of good music for the upcoming September concert, which is an animal-themed childrens' concert, including Flight of the Bumblebee (from the Tale of Tsar Saltan), Peter and the Wolf, and the Overture to The Wasps. The Brighton pieces aren't so interesting, but, on the plus side, we are growing again, which is definitely a good thing.

A few weeks ago, I was hired by a programming startup in Boulder, which is incredibly exciting for me. The good news is that, although I had no real experience with C# (the language of choice) before beginning, I think I've picked up at least the basics pretty quickly.

Got together with Rader last week for the first time in a long time. We hung out, went to dinner and played some Illuminati. (Steve and I think there should be a Futurama Illuminati game, but we can't come up with enough Illuminati groups.

The refrigerator doesn't get as cold as it should, so it's been moved up on the priority list. We've had to throw away some milk and some lunchmeat already.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii) is a very bizarre game. Metroid Prime 3 (Wii) is pretty cool. Resident Evil 4 (Wii) is cool, but I heard that RE5 won't be available on the Wii, which is ridiculous because the control system on the Wii is the best I've encountered for the style.

Went to a family party last night in welcome of the Wayward Travelers, Amy and Terry, who had been away all summer (more or less). Also, mom's half-brother Dean was there, which was nice. Played Wise or Otherwise, Guillotine and RoboRally. Someday, I will win at RoboRally. Really.

I can't think of any other news that's fit to publish, so I'll sign off for now.

Skallywaggs

Bent Castle Workshops

Skallywaggs is a pirate-themed collect-the-sets card game, much like Rummy. Each person attempts to collect a set of ten buccaneers to set sail open the high seas by playing and swapping heads, bodies and feet, while obstructing er opponents with event cards and body parts (such as the peg leg or the eyepatch) that stop a sailor from sailin'.

My sister let Steve and me borrow a copy of this game, which she had obtained at a card convention and thought it looked really neat. So, last night we gave it a try, and, after a failed start (we misread the rules regarding hand limits), we played a full game.

I was mostly disappointed with this game, which is a shame because the premise is promising; it may just have been my luck last night, but it felt terribly unbalanced to me. Additionally, the game took FAR too long; again, it may have been our play style, but 10 complete pirates is a lot to go for. The game may be more balanced with more players, and it may also be designed for less strategic play than Steve and I attempted (we went through the deck FOUR TIMES before Steve won, and that was largely because I gave up).

So, I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone, although I probably wouldn't disrecommend it, either. But I doubt we'll be playing it again.

Quantum Minigolf

Ok, so this is kinda neat. There's a computer game called Quantum Minigolf, in which the ball is a QM ball, meaning that it diffracts and interferes and such. Which is AWESOME. Trust me. Anyway, I haven't had a chance to try the program yet, but I thought I'd post this so I'll remember to later.

Cribbage-- ("Cribbage Minus Minus")

This Cribbage variant was developed by Steve Mathias and Geoffrey Lehr for use with a five-suited deck, like the Stardeck, that makes it easy to distinguish the fifth suit from the others, although it could be played with other decks.

Play is as normal, except that stars (or whatever the fifth suit is) have negative values during the play of the hand, and when counting fifteens after the hand. "Negative fifteen" (eg Q✫, 5✫) still counts as 2 points. Combinations that are identical to another combination except for cards which sum to zero are illegal. (eg, 9♠ 10♠ 4✫ is worth 2 points, but Q✫ 10♠ 10♦ 5♦ is not a valid combination). Stars count as normal for pairs, runs, nobs, etc.

Once the count reaches 31 during play, it is reset to zero, even if a player holds a star and could still play.

Five-suited Bridge

I (finally!) found some rules for bridge with five suits! The rules are summarized in the TIME magazine article Super-Bridge, which appeared on March 7, 1938!

In brief:

Super-Bridge (Five-suited Bridge)

By: Walther Marseille

Players: 4

Deal: 16 cards to each player. One card is left over, and may be swapped with another card by the declarer if desired, but only before play begins.

Bidding: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades, Stars (or whatever), No Trump

Play: As normal, but with 16 tricks.

Book: 8 tricks

Points for tricks over book: Clubs & Diamonds, 20; Hearts & Spades, 25; Stars, 30; No Trump, 40.

Game points: 120

Possible Slams: Little slam (14 tricks), Grand Slam (15 tricks), Super-Slam (16 tricks)

I don't know how well the game plays (having not yet played it), but I'm somewhat wary of the point values. It might be better to combine Stars & No Trump. Also, leaving the game points at 100 would, at least, make for a faster game, though whether or not this is desirable is questionable.

The article mentions that this variant eliminates the possibility of a single-suit hand (since there are 16 cards in each hand and only 13 cards in a suit), which could be desirable, although such occurances are rare anyway.