Matthew Supert

This past weekend we had the opportunity of having our niece spend the night and this gave Megan and I the perfect opportunity to go out and buy some more games from our favorite game shop, The Wandering Dragon. We of course ended up buying a lot more than we possibly could have played, but we bought the following games.

• Forbidden Island
• The Red Dragon Inn
• Zombie Dice
• Dragon Dice 
• Eye for an Eye

We started out the evening by playing Forbidden Island. I knew as a cooperative game that this would be easy for everyone to play and we ended up having a blast with it. We played two games and had a great time. The next day we also played some Zombie Dice while we ate lunch. 

Later on Saturday I tried to play Dragon Dice with Megan. We sort of got the gist of it, but the rules for the game were pretty terrible. I ended up having to go online the next day to watch some Youtube videos on how to play Dragon Dice. If you are looking for some good videos, these guys over at Youtube have made some really nice videos. In the the end I think the game can be a lot of fun. There is an incredible depth and scalability to this game that I really like. It can be as simple as the starter pack that I bought or much more complex. I find that intriguing. 

FInally I had to buy the Red Dragon Inn as it has become one of my favorite games as of late and I haven't been able to find the original game in many places. When the Wandering Dragon had four copies on their shelf, I had to pick it up. 

Lastly, Megan bought Eye for an Eye, which we unfortunately need at least five people to play. It looks like a cool party game though where it has a sorto f murder mystery aspect to it. 

Last week I had the opportunity to head up to the East Troy electric railroad museum. At first I wasn't quite sure if I was going to enjoy this ride, but in the end it was a really fund day. East Troy appears to have several little historical things in their downtown area focused around an old railway. We took an electric trolley over to a farm house for some lunch, where I had Wisconsin grilled cheese along with some apple pie. We then took the train back to East Troy where we finished off the day with some ice cream at an old fashioned ice cream shop. 

Every once in a while you read a book with only mild interest, only to have it take hold of you and drag you through the pages by the arm. That recently happened to me with Shatter: The Children of Man. 

I have had this book sitting on my Kindle for almost two years and I honestly have no idea how I picked it up. After my vacation a few weeks ago I decided to just open this book up and give it a go. I was completely hooked by it within the first

 few chapters and basically consumed the book within a couple of days. Shatter is written Elizabeth C. Mock and at the time of its initial publishing the book was released interdependently.  I got my wife to read the book and she instantly devoured it as well and is no onto book #2. 

I would highly recommend someone check this book out. It is only $2.99 on most ebook stores and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised as I was. If you like, you can read my full review on the book over at Goodreads.com

So I have been bouncing around the idea of getting some new golf clubs for a few months now. Today Megan and I needed to get out of the house and we found ourselves over at Golf Galaxy to check out some of the clubs and such that they had there. I was pretty disappointed in the staff there. No one came up to help me after I spent a good 15-20 minutes looking at irons. Ultimately we ended up leaving and I found myself heading over to Dick's Sporting Goods up the street. I saw on Foursquare that several people recommended checking them out for golf equipment. To my pleasant surprise, I found that the staff there was super helpful and knowledgeable. Immediately upon entering the golf department "Bob" came up and asked if I needed assistance. I told him I was interested in buying a new iron set and we were off and running from there. Bob was fantastic and extremely knowledgeable. He must have spent a good 45 minutes with me trying different clubs out and fitting me for my clubs. His knowledge was great and he even had suggestions for modifying my grip and stance based upon my swing type and the clubs. 

While chatting with one of the other sales representatives we found out that Bob is about 74 years old, retired and loves golf. It seems that everyone in the store loves the guy and he came to work at Dick's after being too bored in retirement of just playing golf every day. While I did not initially intend to buy a set of clubs while walking into that store, I certainly walked out with a pair of clubs. I was so impressed with Bob's service that I actually had to go up to the store manager and compliment him. I cannot remember the last time I have run into such a helpful sales associate at any store, let alone a big sports store like Dick's Sporting Goods. 

Alright, E3 is done and we have our new consoles coming out this fall. The Xbox One and the PS4. I have no idea what this point which one I plan on buying. Even before Microsoft's reversal on its DRM policies I didn't totally write the Xbox off. I currently live in the Live ecosystem and I love it for the most part. After checking out what Microsoft showed at E3 though, I can't help but feel that I am not the target audience for the Xbox anymore. 

For me the console is going to primarily be a gaming console. Not a media center, not a streaming device. A lot of what Microsoft showed appeared to be focused along those line. I don't even pay for cable and the only streaming service I use is Netflix. And let's face it Microsoft, I am not going to use Xbox Music. Stop trying to make it happen. It seems like a lot of the services for the Xbox I will just never use. The whole cloud computing component does seem interesting though and I am not as down on the Kinect as some people are. Both can offer some really interesting gaming features in the future. The problem at this point though is that I just haven't seen good examples yet of how they would be used. 

Now Sony had an impressive showing as well. The core gaming components seem more along the lines of what I want and after seeing the initial interface preview, I like the concept of a social network around gaming that they are building. Being able to share gameplay videos, chat with my friends and see what people are playing is compelling. I like how it isn't just trying to tie into Facebook, and to be honest I am more attracted to target social networks for the various hobbies I participate in. Being in a community that focuses on gamers will lead to more meaningful conversations about gaming rather than trying to wade through the volume of people of Facebook that don't care. I probably spend more time these days on Goodreads talking with people about books and reading than i do on Facebook itself. 

What really has me excited more than anything else though is just the fact that I am seeing the heated debates once again showing up on the internet. The console wars are back and it is sort of satisfying to see the vigor at which people want to fight over the console. I think this next year is really going to be fun in the gaming world. 

So last week I had the opportunity to have a really nice break from life and go on a cruise. This was my wife's first cruise and it was absolutely fantastic. Of course this cruise couldn't have happened without some incident, it overall was exactly what I needed. It sort of is nice to not have to worry about anything at all for a week. 

It has been a pretty frustrating motorcycle season so far this year. The weather has not really cooperated with my schedule. The days that I have been free unfortunately have seemed to have pretty bad weather. Not really an excuse, I know, but I really need to find some time to get some rides in. 

Time for another video game update. First up is my thoughts on the Ouya. So far, I have to say that it is a Beta of a 1.0 product. I see the potential, but there isn't much there yet. I have to say that the SNES emulators on it are pretty good and you know what is a good game? The Secret of Mana. I wanted to play that game so bad when I was probably 10 years old and I unfortunately never got it back in the. I must have spent a good four or five hours last week playing through that. I am not sort of stuck at what is known as one of the harder boss fights with some sort of fire breathing tiger. Man that guy is hard. 

The other game I am working on right now is Dragon's Dogma, which ironically enough is another Japanese RPG. I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by this one, even though it got high praise from the Giantbomb crew on their podcast. It has a little bit of a Monster Hunter vibe going to it. It is difficult, but not brutally punishing. Stick to the story elements early on and it is very satisfying. My only major complaint however is that the Japanese tropes and mannerisms come out too much in the characters. You of course are playing the silent protagonist and the facial expressions they use to try and convey emotion for the character just seem silly. 

The pawn system is really cool though when it is shared online with the world. I love looking at how other people designed their pawns.

Alright, so those who know me know that I am a gamer. Last year I was a backer of the kickstarter for the Ouya project. The Ouya is a small, very cheap open source gaming platform built on Android. The whole concept is actually pretty cool. This week I received my kickstarter Ouya and decided to take some photos. 

From a hardware perspective it is actually a pretty nice looking little box. The build quality seems pretty good and it is really easy to get access to the components. The control is nicely ergonomic and the face plates for the batters are held in place by magnets that attach to the screws on the chassis of the controller internals. A really interesting design choice which I think is brilliant. 

Overall the software at this point is still pretty rough. This is a beta of a v1.0 production. The Ouya interface is pretty bare bones and a bit laggy at times. You can see a lot of elements of the underlying android mobile interface if you delve too deep and there really aren't too many games for it at this point. I really hope it succeeds in the long run though. The idea of having the open platform that is cheap to develop on for students and whatever is really promising. It really connects with some of the DIY nature you see coming out of the Make people with the 3D printers and Arduino, etc.