FOR FRIENDS FAR & WIDE.

News.

06 March 2004
PHOTO DIARY.

The Santa Monica chicken car. Interestingly, this car has inspired art.

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05 March 2004
PHOTO DIARY.

My co-worker Josh let me know about this interesting clipping from the most recent issue of Variety.

I got my scooter license plate today. See how wee it is!

Kristina, our copywriter, threw together an impromptu margarita party in our office today. We had chips, salsa, and 80's dance hits playing on my computer. We all had a really fun time, which this photo fails miserably at conveying.

Later, Dave paid a visit. He is, as you probably already know, the 2004 World Air Guitar Champion.

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04 March 2004
PHOTO DIARY.

Our refrigerator at work, which was previously stocked with juice, was wheeled away by strangers and replaced with a vending machine. But the drinks are still free. Is it a ploy to regulate our soda intake? I wouldn't know. I stopped drinking soda a while ago. So instead I began wondering whose job it is to design the front of the machine.

Who designed this one, I wonder? And what were they thinking at the time?

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03 March 2004
PHOTO DIARY.

You wouldn't believe it, but there's all kinds of fruit trees growing in people's gardens less than a block off of bustling Sunset Blvd. Today, fellow designer Debbie & I visited the kumquat tree.

And voila. Hope the owner doesn't mind.

On the way back from our walk, we went to Frankie & Johnnie's, a locally famous pizza parlor frequented by celebrities. Note the signature by adult film star Ron Jeremy.

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02 March 2004
QUOTE: CAT TRAINING IN 10 MINUTES (MIRIAM FIELDS-BABINEAU, 2003).

"All animal training is based on operant conditioning. In essence, the animal is taught to respond in a specific way to a stimulus in order to receive a reward. We do this every day. We go to work. We get paid. Cats prefer their payment in the form of a food or a toy."

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PHOTO DIARY.

The view from our balcony. Note the distant hills, which are normally obscured by smog.

Westwood: Lovely late-afternoon light glinting off skyscrapers and gridlocked cars.

At work today I discovered that we are provided with "ER Bars," which are Emergency Ration Food Provisions for extreme cases of emergency.

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GAME: THE CRIMSON ROOM.

An interesting click-n-explore puzzle game from Toshimitsu Takagi, in which you wake up in a red room after a night of drinking and must find a way to escape. The flat-rendered 3d art gives the game a nice anonymous feel, and also give the strong impression that there's lots of mysteries to be uncovered behind the seemingly bare environment. The solution is a bit obscure, and requires lots and lots of clicking everywhere, but escaping the room ultimately feels satisfying. Play it now.

GAMEPLAY: Good. It's a little hard to tell where to click, and which click will do what, but maybe that's part of the point of it.
REMINISCENT OF: Myst, Gadget.
LIBRARY WORTHY? Maybe. Toshimitsu's building another "room", so we'll see.

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01 March 2004
GAME: SAVE THE SHERIFF

This Shockwave side-scrolling platformer by Playdo features super-responsive gameplay and mystifyingly slick production. How the heck did Playdo code this thing to run so smoothly? And how did they get the screen to blur like that? Aside from the familiar run-, jump-, bonk baddies-, collect coins-type activities, there are also a few surprises, like delivering homesick parakeets to their owners and setting off bombs to cause avalanches of blocks. I'd love to talk shop with these Playdo people...maybe I will the next time I find myself in Sweden. Playdo also makes a 3d multiuser community called Playdo Community, which I have yet to investigate. In any case, Save the Sheriff is extremely well crafted -- an effortless display of great game design skills. Play it now.

GAMEPLAY: Great. Each level has a few surprises to keep things interesting.
REMINISCENT OF: Super Mario.
LIBRARY WORTHY? Yes, but it's only available online.

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29 February 2004
GAME: ACNO'S ENERGIZER

In this Flash puzzler by Uselab, you control a little creature who pushes blocks around a simple maze, causing chain reactions to reveal the level's exit. Super-clean production, snappy animations and clever puzzles easily outshine the game's minor weakenesses, which include the need for a "kill" button (if you make a mistake while solving the puzzle, you basically have to forfeit one life to get a do-over) and a buggy level code system. I played through something like 30 levels, writing each level code down, only to find that they didn't work. Oh well. "Acno" is published in other forms, including Aqua Energizer and Crypt Raider, which are simply re-skins of the same basic game engine but with new levels. You can even create your own levels online, which impresses the hell out of me. Play it now.

GAMEPLAY: Great. Difficulty ramps up nicely.
REMINISCENT OF: Sokoban, Dig Dug, Tutankhamen
LIBRARY WORTHY? Yes, but it's only available online.

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GAME: SOAPBUBBLE.

In this Flash game by Anders Gustafsson at Strumaland, the player manuvers a little lost bubble through a series of perilous mineshafts. It's incredibly hard to keep the bubble from swinging out of control, so don't stay for the gameplay. Stay, instead, for the art. The environment is drawn in tasteful duotone, black silhouetted against dark olive, giving it the intimate, mysterious feel of a world in miniature. The ambient sound adds further drama to the setting. I couldn't get past level 3, though. Play it now.

GAMEPLAY: Really hard. Difficulty skyrockets after level 1.
REMINISCENT OF: Out of This World, Marble Madness
LIBRARY WORTHY? Yes, but it's only available online.

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GAME: PRINCE OF PERSIA -- THE SANDS OF TIME (2004).

This latest edition to the Prince of Persia franchise captures the puzzle-solving spirit of the original while setting breathtaking new standards for atmospheric environments, art, character animations, and...character dialogue (yep--it's some of the best I've heard in a game). Gameplay wise, running along walls, dangling off cliffs, and performing other gymnastics are so satisfying that you can easily overlook the minor flaws in the game: annoying hand-to-hand combat gameplay, rare camera problems, and a somewhat gimmicky 'rewind time' feature. Completing the game unlocks the original Prince of Persia and POP II, both of which induce both nostalgia and controler-throwing frustration in roughly equal amounts.

GAMEPLAY: Fun, easy
REMINISCENT OF: Ico, Original Prince of Persia
LIBRARY WORTHY? Yes. Beautiful art/character direction; bundled with older versions of the game for historical continuity.

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