Thinking about Games

If all goes well, I should have my copy of GTA4 today - and should be posting a first impressions pretty soon as a short rant, I guess. I realised that I love talking about games, yet I haven't said much about what I have been playing lately, except in Short Rants, so I thought I'd summarise what I thought here about a few games I've played recently.

Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath: The gameplay is the same C&C3 formula. This time round there's only a NOD campaign which fills in some of the storyline gaps in the story. The problem? These gaps are for the most part insignificant - except for the one concerning the merger of the LEGION and the Tacitus. For the most part, no new significant details are revealed, except that Kane did plan to leave Redmond Boyle in command of GDI, the betrayal of Kilian Qatar was orchestrated by another party and that the GDI (still) has little idea on how to use the Tacitus. There are less 'infiltration' style missions this time around, and the campaign has some variation depending on which faction you happen to have available - although the frequent nonavailability of aircraft can get annoying. The game is still good - but I'm not sure it's worth the cash.

No More Heroes: The game manages to use the Wii Remote in a non-gimmicky way, which I am very fond of. In a sense, it's how Folklore used the PS3 SIXAXIS, which didn't seem so gimmicky since most of your fighting is controlled by pressing a button. The graphics leave much to be desired (they seem pre-PS2 sometimes), but the gameplay is solid - and I have little to complain about. It's a good game. (I haven't finished it yet, though.)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Another instalment of Super Smash Bros. brings about the same complaints I had about its predecessor. I still have no idea what's going on, the camera zooms out way too far - and even on my 22 inch it can get difficult to tell what's happening. Everything is locked randomly, which is still very annoying for a party game. I couldn't be bothered to play the Single Player, and can't be bothered to finish unlocking everything. Considering I got a Freeloader just to play this thing, I'm greatly disappointed that it hasn't improved at all since Melee.

Mario Kart Wii: I've been playing a little bit of Mario Kart, and I don't really have much to comment. Mario Kart Wii fills a hole up in the casual racing segment that has seen very little real competition and very few entries in the past few years. I was looking forward to it - since I've played both the GameCube and DS iterations to death, and now I have the Wii version to play loads again. Nothing much has changed (for me) sadly, so I can't really say Nintendo has done anything to improve it. (Not like they have anything to worry about. Most other 'copycats' tend to suck. If you've liked it before, you'll still like it. The game still rocks - as long as you as clever about where to stay in the race.

Crysis: I got access to a nice computer recently (Q6600 + 8800GT) so I thought I should give Crysis a retry. Apparently, my verdict still holds. The graphics of forests are actually the worst part of the game, so no wonder I kept complaining about them. The storyline sucks. The gameplay sucks. The way enemies that don't wear nanosuits absorb ammo sucks. The amount of ammo you can hold sucks. The graphics are nice, but the level design is utter crap. (Example - alien ship, really cool looking - but also really easy to get lost. Ditto for human ship. :P) I'm sorry, but not even the graphics redeems the game for me.

Need for Speed Prostreet: I didn't see it before, but Prostreet is still a very NFS-ish game. The handling feels funny - because it is funny - but once you get used to it, the game is pretty fun, although I must say, I miss the old feel of Most Wanted. (I know I said the same thing about Carbon. :P) I haven't played much, but I probably will play a lot when exam time comes along. Unless GTA4 and Rock Band eat up all that time. Then, I'll probably have to say: sorry PC, you lose your gaming priority.

Singstar: This probably comes as a surprise to some, and not to others. But - Singstar?! I know I'm an awful singer, so needless to say I suck at this game (although some of my friends should know me as a notorious hummer, hehehe). :P I've bought 2 songs for it just to try out the Singstore (and add some songs I actually know to the playlist). I've played Rock Band before, and I think I prefer Rock Band's method of showing you where your pitch is, Singstar tends to draw it a little late sometimes, and that makes it difficult to read for me sometimes. It is a very fun game at parties, especially when someone decides their high-pitched voice is needed for beating you. No, I'm not kidding - someone did it when we played it. It's a great party game - can't really see myself playing it alone though.

Extending the Traffic Light Problem

Of course, I looked at a simplified version of the first part of the problem. There are always more traffic lights in real life. Here's the big picture (and the real problem):

Now that you know the big picture - does my original argument still hold? To see whether it does, let us consider what happens when we choose to cross at the first traffic light if it is green.

If we do, our problem is simplified to this:

Using our original assumptions of independent Bernoulli trials, you can see simply that you have a 87.5% chance of being able to cross at one of these set of the moment you come to one. This are significantly better odds than you had before (50%) - but it is still unable to beat the result from skipping that first green traffic light (100%). (Yes, crossing at that north T junction vertically DOES NOT require you to wait for a traffic light.)

Surely, there must be a point to me writing about this. The point is simple:

Minimize the number of traffic lights you have to cross to minimize travel time.

Why is this important? It will help you understand some decisions you can choose to make during my journey to university when I get to that - and the path I chose to minimize travel time, while minimizing disutility while travelling to university. Next up: why you might decide against lower travel time.

The Law of Coin Pressure

I remember have this strange theory that is usually true. I might have even mentioned it on this blog before maybe even blogged about, but this is a post entirely devoted to this funny subject.

In a contracted form, it simply says this: The more coins or small change you have, the more likely you are to give them out - and the less likely you are to receive them. I call it "coin pressure" as a reference to air pressure. Air flows from high pressure areas to low pressure areas - and so do coins. This is typically the case when you go out with friends.

Imagine the case where you go out with friends to eat. Being students, going Dutch is standard practice. There is no arguing over who pays the bill. Everyone pays the bill. Now, some places do cater to students and allow you to pay separately for items on the bill. This means that there is conversation going: "You owe this much from that, and you're supposed to pay for that, and I'm supposed to pay for this."

Usually you relegate this calculation to the accounting major students by just using the excuse that usually goes: "Let's give this to the accounting majors to sort out." In real life, there's probably a better mental mathematician at the table than the accountants (in fact I think in our case it was a management major student) - but hey, anything to not do the work. :P

After it gets sorted out, then everybody gets the numbers. Sometimes the numbers can get pretty bad change wise, for example, $8.90 per person. That means to pay exactly, you need one $5 note, one $2 coin, one $1 coin, one 50c coin, and two 20c coin - and that's already the simplest possible. 6 pieces of change to pay off your bill.

Of course, if you have the change, you just pay your part. If you don't, you take on more and more change - in general, the bigger the currency note you have to pay with, the more change you will have to carry when you leave. It follows that the opposite holds true, the more small change you have, the less small change you will have to carry when you leave. (Hence, the origin of the law.)

There is the largest possible denomination of currency - a credit card. If you are paying the bill on behalf of the table by credit card, then you effectively collect all the payment by everyone else - since you had the lowest "coin pressure".

Of course, there is such a thing as too much coin pressure. If you carry around 200 5c coins just so that you will always have enough coin pressure to pay off any possible bill within $10 - nobody will want to have to split a bill with you. :P

Moral of the story?

Carry a good variety of coins and small notes with you.

Try to never leave any coins at home unless it's in your piggy bank. Coins at home have this bad habit of accumulating to ridiculous numbers since you leave more and more and home - and leaving coins at home reduces your coin pressure, hence increasing the probability of you receiving even more coins.

Dead Time

I've gone back to having a lot of dead time - and I just realised - lazing around is pretty fun for me, even when I'm restless. Utility from doing nothing. WTF.

Cost of Gaming: Nintendo Wii and Some Reflections

This post continues from Cost: Console Gaming vs PC Gaming. I won't be assuming too much this time around since if you really want to, you can just go read the older post. The most notable is that I've made accessories into an annual cost. There are a lot of accessories for the Nintendo Wii - the Wii Fit, the Wii Wheel, the Wii Zapper, Rock Band controllers, Dance Mat and so on. A Nintendo Wii owner is more likely to buy these things than any other gamer since they are casual gamers after all. They still buy the same number of games - because I think they're idiots. (And since I own a Wii, yes I'm an idiot.)

Nintendo Wii cost: USD250

Annual cost: Accessories (random pieces of plastic, Rock Band): about USD100 a year Games: USD420

I'm gonna assume it lasts six years, even though analysts say that's unlikely (we all know how good analysts at predicting things, for an example, see predictions of Australian dollar rise about 1.6 months ago). At a discount rate of 7% p.a., Wii gaming costs: US$2624.04.

It looks like the result is similar to the XBox 360. Here's the set of numbers again to refresh your memory:

XBox 360: $2635.94 PS3: $2447.61 PC: $2313.58 PC (with MMO): $2885.57 Wii: US$2624.04

It just shows what I've already shown earlier - any addition to the annual cost is a big hit to the cost of gaming on the console. And there it is - a comparable Wii number.

Remember to take all of these numbers with a grain of salt. In essence, they assume you spend money on the same amount of games. In real life, we know that's probably not true. For example, I play significantly less Wii and PC games than I do on my XBox 360 and PS3. I've also ignored the second hand market. If you play your cards right, you might spend only about $200 a year on games.

However, just to conclude - yes, PC gaming is relatively cheaper compared to consoles. But to be honest, you are gonna buy a nicer PC case. A nicer power supply unit. A new burner. A wireless networking card. And maybe even better RAM than what I've put there. When that all adds up, you find that gaming on any platform - will cost about the same.

So, stop ranting about which form of gaming costs less, which console is cheaper - and just start playing more games.