Haugland {.ca}

This is an interesting game concept that's very artsy. Doesn't look as though it'll be super difficult, but it seems like it would be very relaxing to play.

Looks pretty neat. And from checking it out, it'll probably be on XBox Live sometime in early 2009. So probably in the $8 price range.

I think it's safe to say that any hype for Gears of War 2 was well met. And even better, there's a hint for a 3rd to make it a trilogy! Anyways, the game is amazing to play, building off of the success of the first and growing into something better.

I don't want to say much about what you actually in the game because the story is actually substantial and strong enough that it could be deemed as spoilers. But, yes, the story in the game is actually good. They do an excellent job selling it with their characters and their action, without spoiling it by over-forcing the story. Not everyone will get into the story, but I found it to be solid motivation to progress in the game.

In terms of game length, I'd say a play-through on "casual" difficulty is roughly 7-10 hours (depending on how many times you die). Not sure about other difficulties, but I'd imagine slightly longer due to the more difficult fights. Speaking of which, some of the new enemies are pretty awesome -- as are the bosses. Might be a spoiler, but the end boss is definitely easier than RAAM. You won't see 

The game is nearly perfect. There's a little bit of puzzle, great story, lots of action, some really fun things to do, and man it's fun to destroy stuff with a Lancer. I can definitely recommend at least playing through the single player. I'm sure the online play is just as awesome (which I've yet to do because I've been working this weekend).

Just curious if anyone has noticed delays for pre-order shipments? Everytime I've tried to pre-order something, the arrival date is 1-2 weeks after the release date. In the past it would arrive either on the day of release or the next. I gave it a shot after seeing a week delay, and sure enough, it was arrived exactly one week after the release date.

It could be a Canadian thing though, as I found possible claims of release day delivery for several games (Fable 2 is the one I ordered). Just curious if I'm getting bad luck or what... Would be nice to get the benefits of pre-ordering. Think I'll do in-store pick-ups for some I want on launch day from now on.

Edit: My reason of putting intentional in the title is because I've heard of a few cases of distributors getting into trouble for accidently releasing titles early. They might be trying to prevent/combat that.

Launching this weekend is NHL GameCenter. For the launch, it's free to use this weekend, then requiring either a monthly or annual subscription. What's so cool about this? You can stream 4 live games at the same time. Yep, 4 games at the same time. Or if you want to stream just a single game, you can stream at nice 1.2 mbps.

While watching the game, you get live stats, lots of live updates, chat with other people watching and a live scoreboard of the other games in the NHL. There's supposed to be other features like manually watching replays, highlights and stuff, but I haven't stumbled across that stuff yet. On the plus, the streams seem to be super stable and of decent quality.

I'm pretty stoked that the NHL has taken this initiative. I'm also glad that it was built in Flex (a technology I work with) because it's cross platform, smooth, looks great and I can watch it wherever I go. I do hope they improve some things and add in the ability to rewatch a goal at any time during the game, it would pretty much guarantee I never watch a game on a TV again (unless we can get the same interaction there as well).

So Walmart announced that they're turning off their DRM servers pretty soon. This follows the prior moves by MSN and Yahoo to do the same. Guess who gets screwed... yep, the people that decidedly to legal purchase music. And now they're encouraged to burn their music in the event of moving to a new computer or a system crash. Seriously?

This is the exact reason why I've stopped purchasing music with DRM. And why I'll never buy games that push the same restrictions (oops, I bought Spore for Mac -- and I regret it -- because it's a terrible game). At least with music they give you the simple option of burning your music and ripping them. But that's an awful lot of time and CDs to do it. With games, movies, tv shows, etc... you're pretty much screwed at this point. Better hope you stay activated.

Solution: if you're shutting down your DRM service, give a tool that removes the DRM. Third-party scripts can do it, so I assume the DRM vendors can do it too. It's really the least they can do. I doubt they ever will, but damn, it should be law.

While on this topic... what's with the DRM on Call of Duty 4 for Mac? At least with the download version it sucks. I remember when I could take my disk anywhere I went, install it, play it, uninstall. Good thing I have it for the 360 -- which oddly enough, I can take to my friends house to enjoy there, no activation required.

Anyone who thinks DRM is good for the consumer is looking at it from a very narrow perspective. As its very evident now, it hurts the consumer and only delays piracy.

It's early in the morning, so I'm going to get my brain going by listing 10 things... 5 things I've lost interest in and 5 things I now have interest in.

5 Now Boring Things

• iPhone App Store
• Canadian Federal Election
• Hybrid engines
• Google Chrome
• Nintendo Wii

5 Now Exciting Things

• Flex 4/Flash Player 10/AIR 1.5
• Digital Distribution (music, movies, tv, games)
• Android
• Daylight Dies (band)
• Fringe

Twilight of the Thunder God

Okay... So I'm posting less tech stuff on my blog. I'm just reaching out more and posting what I'm interested in at the current time. And well, this video is completely awesome. It's not overly cheesy and fits the band extremely well. It is metal, so be warned if you're not a fan.

P.S. Sorry for posting the MySpace video -- but it's their official video release spot.