Williams Pinball Hall of Fame – Xbox 360

Oh lordy did I love me some Williams Pinball HoF for the Wii. The physics engine was the most authentic I've experienced and the tables seemed so well modeled. The flippers just felt right with the wiimote/nunchuk combo. My wife may have been looking forward to the 360 version coming out more than I have just so that I would stop talking about being excited to get the whole deal in for real HD.

As context, I have actually been talking about planning another trip to Vegas just to visit the Pinball Hall of Fame again for a few days. That's how much I enjoy playing pinball. Having the Wii version tickle me just right is a very magical thing.

I got home, ripped open the Amazon package, and fired up the 360. I admit, I've only played a few tables, but.. There's just something wrong with the flippers. They're mushy. They're slow. They're what would make me tell the arcade operator they might need some maintenance. I'm going to give it some more time, mostly because I can milk some easy gamer points out of it J BUT, I do so with GRAVE reservation. Even remapping the flippers to the bumpers instead of the analog triggers didn't do it.

I feel kind of empty.

It's still the best pinball for the 360 - definitely superior to the deal of the week of Pinball FX - but I dreamt of so much more.

Update - OK, you get used to the lagginess of the controls.  Just the additional boards available over the Wii version make me feel better.  If you've got a choice, I'd still lean towards the $15 on Amazon Wii version, but this would be great at $30 on Amazon for the 360.

Raiden IV

Everything that I've read about Raiden IV online has boiled down to essentially hemming and hawing about paying $40 for a Raiden game when Raiden Fighter Aces is two games for $20.



None of them has acknowledged the awesomeness of Dual mode in Raiden IV, though. One controller, both ships. One stick for each, triggers and bumpers to control main fire and bombs. I almost wet myself playing, it was that stimulating.



Of course, it's BS that they're charging for the two additional ships you can get when they obviously should have been included with the entry price. Oh well. I'm a big boy. I'll stomach getting nickel and dimed for now. I just hope it sells well enough that they come out with some more marquee shooters like this.

Update - Guess I hadn't paid attention properly to Raiden Fighter Aces - it's actually 3 games.  

Another test post

Testing to see if updated domain still feeds the same RSS feeds.

 

Also, for some reason Word loves crashing now when I hit the big Microsoft button.

Word 2007 blog posting evaluation

Well, that was easy.

I can't vouch for how well it would work with richer media content than plain text, but it was pretty damn simple.

No wonder people do this all the time!

My one qualm is that it apparently doesn't securely transmit your login information, which I *think* does happen when dealing directly with the Blogger web interface.

May have to try creating a secondary login for Blogger.

Testing out Word 2007 blog posting

So, when creating a new document in Word 2007 you have the basic options of doing a new blank document or a new blog post. How does it work? That's what I'm trying to figure out. There's something sexy about a blank swath of white sitting on my screen, waiting to be filled up.

 

HITTING GO BUTTON NOW

Mr. Mom?

The topic of being a stay at home spouse came up at work yesterday and everybody seemed to be agreeing that if they didn’t have a kid at home, they would just go crazy. I got some odd looks when I said “oh, I’d probably start writing if I was designated the stay at home parent.” Is that so weird?

I look at it this way – my brain produces weird output. I take massive amounts of input. If I connect the two, I should be able to write a decent amount. Right?

Of course, it’s not likely to really be insightful unless I crack down and set my mind to it. If I *don’t* take it seriously, though.. I’ve seen a lot of people get good mileage out of media remixing and review.

At the very least, it would be interesting to get a chance to concentrate on a longer form than haiku. Not that there’s anything wrong with haiku! It helps keep my brain pressure under control during times of too little stimulus!

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld