Rorschach.net

• Probably going to install Window7 RC1 tonight. #

• SotS:ANY released today at fine game download sites. Spaceship Get! #

TiVo (or the more generic DVR) is one of those technologies that changes your lifestyle. Like the first time you used a cable modem at home, or bought music online for your mp3 player. TiVo allows me to lock on to a few shows and watch them during my downtimes of late evening and weekends. A surprising number of them are basic cable summer shows.

Top Tier:

• Leverage – A-team for the 21st Century. All the archetypes are there, the thief, the techie, the grifter, the muscle, and the brain. But it’s done with good characters and style. Highly recommended, get the first season if you can.
• Burn Notice – Come for the Bruce Campbell, stay for the practical spycraft lessons in voiceover.

Runners Up:

• In Plain Sight – The WITSEC background injects wide variety in police procedural parts, and the lead really has some daddy issues.
• Royal Pains – Could be a good show, too early to tell.
• The Closer – Another quirky cast in a police procedural, but hey I like the crew and the humor.

At the Back:

• Entourage – Sex and the City for guys but not enough has happened in the last few seasons to keep me caring.
• True Blood – Vampires aren’t my thing, but the wife loves ‘em so I’ll keep watching.

• Am I easily wowed by special effects or just have bad taste in movies if I thought Speed Racer was cool? #
• Prototype beckons but I'm having a great time with Red Faction: Guerrilla. Might have to hold off for a while. #
• Caught up on all my social networking: Twitter, blog, LJ, Facebook, two forums, and Google Reader. Goodnight Internet peoples. #
• Hopefully this version of TweetDeck is a little less crashy. #
• Red Faction: Guerrilla multiplayer really is a thing of beauty. Haven't been this hooked since CoD 4. #

I’ve been using a single cell phone for voice communications for over seven years now. There’s one number to get me talking to you so the coordination of multiple phone numbers provided by Google Voice wasn’t that desirable. But I am a technology junkie so about a year ago I signed up with GrandCentral (which got bought by the Goog) anyway and promptly forgot about it.

Recently I’ve been using my Google Voice number as a “dump” account. Kind of like an alternate email address. I use it for signing up for white papers and mailing lists and handing it out to vendors. Two days ago I finally got a hit.

My cell phone rang early in the day with an out of state number I didn’t recognize. I answered it (I always answer my cell unless very busy) and was greeted with a voice telling me I have a call from “Blahblah Vendor” and I could press “1″ to take the call, “2″ to send it to voicemail, or “3″ to send to voicemail and listen in. So I pressed “2″ and hung up.

He didn’t leave a message (which would have been another cool test of the voice to text features) so I labelled his number as “Blahblah Vendor” put the contact in the Vendor category (i.e. straight to voicemail) and went on with my life. If it’s a vendor that I use I’ll put it in the Partner category that rings my work phone during business hours.

Yesterday I got a note on my door at home saying they couldn’t deliver a fruit basket. I pretty much guessed it was spam, but hey I like fruit, so I called out from my Google Voice number. It linked my cell to the number that was left but on their end the caller ID shows my GV number so the spammers (yeah no fruit for me) are more than welcome to call me back, although they’re in the Vendor category already.

The last thing is the ability to allow calls without giving out my number. Here’s a widget that will ask you for your number and will connect you to my cell without knowing my cell number or even my Google number. Give it a try if you feel like messing around.

All in all I’m pleased with the services. Unfortunately Google Voice isn’t accepting any new users for now, but when it does, I can recommend it for pretty much anyone. As long as you don’t care that Google knows every call that you make.

Apologies in advance for the blatant advertising.

As readers know my friends at Kerberos Productions developed a space “4X” strategy game for the PC called Sword of the Stars back in 2006. Well amost three years later, after two expansions, numerous updates, and countless patches the swan song for SotS (the first) will be released next week. It’s a mini-expansion called SotS: Argos Naval Yard and it’s budget priced for $8.99.

You can’t really find SotS in stores anymore, but with their new publisher it’s out on all the major PC distribution sites like Steam, Direct 2 Drive, GamersGate and Impulse. In celebration of the final release of SotS (the original) multiple sites are offering some sales. As of this post you can get SotS:Ultimate Collection, which contains everything except for Argos Naval Yard, for $7.99 at GamersGate between now and the end of the weekend. Direct 2 Drive is offering a pre-order of SotS:UC and SotS:ANY for a sale price of $16.95. One can assume that Steam and Impulse will follow suit if you prefer those distributors.

SotS is a complex strategy game that I can’t recommend for everyone, but for less than a night out at the movies you can see for yourself what I’ve been doing as a hobby for the last few years. Let me know if you pick it up. I’d love to hear what you think and help out if you get stuck.

I got online with some friends for about three hours last night touring through the multiplayer for Red Faction: Guerrilla. The combination of destructability + backpack abilities + gameplay modes made for a unique experience. As an example the Vision backpack gives you the ability to see through walls a few seconds at a time. It’s great for coordinating your team as you call out enemy locations but it also works on offense.

During one of the many memorable moments of the evening I was defending the flag and knew there was an enemy nearby waiting for backup before rushing the flag. I turned on my Xray specs, picked him out on the other side of the wall, and smashed it an him with my trusty sledgehammer. This is also great as the counter to the Stealth backpack. I don’t know how many times I went mostly invisible, snuck up on an opponent, and took him out with the one-hit sledgehammer attack.

It’s even got an experience system for unlocks (ala CoD 4) that works for custom and ranked matches. Just as RFG puts a new twist on the open world genre, it brings something new to the standard multiplayer shooter as well.

Sandwiched in between the two high profile superhero-in-an-open-world releases of inFamous and Prototype is the excellent game of Red Faction: Guerrilla. I don’t own a PS3 so inFamous isn’t on my radar. Prototype is the team that made Hulk: Ultimate Destruction which is a great game. But RFG has been getting good reviews at my regular haunt and it’s from the devs of Saints Row 2 (which I played a LOT more than GTA IV last year) so I jumped in.

Wow. What a great game. I’ve only played a few hours of single and multiplayer but my initial impressions are very favorable. The mars/sci-fi setting really sets up the style and artwork. There’s a plethora of vehicles and weapons. The detail and draw distance is impressive and I like the mechanics of missions, actions, control and morale to progress in the game.

But the killer app is the destruction. Every single building, bridge, factory, whatever can be destroyed. Not just some, all of them. As an example there’s a rescue mission I was having a lot of trouble with. By the time I fought through the existing guards to the back of the building reinforcements made extraction very tough. So I drove my truck up to the back of the building and used my trusty sledgehammer to knock a hole in the  wall. Took out the guards in the room, left some detonating charges on the load bearing beams, loaded up the truck and sped off as the building collapsed on the reinforcements.

If you like open world games ala GTA IV, Saint’s Row 2, Mercenaries, and the like you really need to take a look at RFG. I’m scheduled to play some online with a group tonight, will probably post additional thoughts over the weekend.

Bad words are said in the embedded video so be careful who’s listening. NSFW.

I listed to the GiantBombcast on a regular basis. Their take on a part of the Nintendo press conference at E3 is frickin’ hilarious.

I played a new kind of videogame Monday night. In an era of time-shifting DVRs allowing you to watch TV when you want to, the Xbox Primetime initiative is a bit of a throwback. It’s a scheduled videogame, the “live” version only available in this case between 7:30 and 9:30. So I grabbed a few folks from the games forum I frequent and lined up to get in.

I’m not kidding when I say lined up. We were some of the lucky 40,000 people to get into the game. The live announcer kept saying over 50,000 but the in game stats said 40,456. Just like the Bob Saget hosted game 101 people actually got to play the game. The rest of us were in the crowd. We still competed against each other in our small group of up to 4 people and the leaderboards were contiually updated to show how well we did against the rest of the crowd. It kept me quite enthralled until the dog needed to go walkies.

So here’s the rules of 1 vs. 100. There’s a single contestant called the One (whoa) and 100 people in the Mob. A question is asked with three possible answers. If the One gets it right play moves on with everyone in the Mob who got it wrong knocked out. As the Mob thins out 10 people the prize money goes up. If the One beats the Mob he or she gets 10,000 Microsoft spacebucks ($125 value). If the One misses a question the remaining Mob splits the prize money. The One gets three lifelines, sorry “helps”, to bail him/her out with a tough question. Trust the Mob automatically takes the most common answer of the Mob. Trust the Crowd does likewise for the 40,000 other people playing the game. Trust the Brain takes the answer of the person with the highest score.

Since I never got into the Mob, let alone be the One (whoa) my measuring stick wasn’t how many spacebucks I won but my score. This is where 1 vs. 100 shows some bar trivia roots.  The answer period is quick to discourage google search answers and like a bar trivia game your score is increased the quicker you answer. You also get bonus points for streaking together correct answers and for how many of the Mob gets knocked out that question. There was a lot of challenge and trash talking in the game. Very fun with friends in the group of 4 or using one of the XBL parties.