I don't have long to write this as I'm about to head off to a family get-together, so it'll be brief.

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• Sonic Riders (GC)
• Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
• Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition
• Batman: Arkham Asylum (gonna have to return one of these...)
• Import Japanese Sonic Jam
• Import Japanese NiGHTS: Into Dreams (Saturn)
• Import Japanese NiGHTS: Into Dreams (PS2)
• Official Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Strategy Guide (personally written by members of Sonic Team)
• "The GrandLine Men Volume 5" Monkey D. Luffy figure
• One Piece: Music & Best Song Collection
• NiGHTS: Dreams Dreams "Talking Moon" CD single
• Norelco facial hair grooming system
• A Snuggie (thanks, Matt ;P)
• Socks and Underwear
• DiRT 2 (Steam)
• Shatter (Steam)
• Tomb Raider: Legend (Steam)
• Beyond Good & Evil (Steam)
• Sam & Max: Season 2 (Steam)
  
• Sam & Max: Season 3 (Steam)
• Puzzle Agent (Steam)
• Poker Night at the Inventory (Steam)
• Tales of Monkey Island (Steam - though I am unsure if this is technically a Christmas item as I got it in October)

 Every year or so, GAF has a "Replay the Half-Life Series" thread. Last year, I played through Half-Life 2 and most of Episode 1. I don't really like Episode 1, but that's another blog post entirely, but needless to say I never made it to Episode 2. This year, I booted up Half-Life 1. I've been holding off replaying it in anticipation for Black Mesa Source, but since it looks like Black Mesa Source will probably miss their 2010 deadline (after also missing their 2009 deadline), I figured it was time I give it a go through again.

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So Quake Arena Arcade finally came out on Xbox Live this week. If you weren't aware, Quake Arena Arcade is the XBLA port of Quake 3 Team Arena, and it was quietly announced in 2007. It's languished in development limbo since then, occasionally making playable appearances at locations like PAX. I believe at one point, John Carmack even admitted it had been flat out canceled. It's a serviceable port of Quake 3, with all the features you remember from the original release of Team Arena. The team that ported it, Pi Studios, went the extra mile, though. QAA features updated lighting, a new scoreboard system (that gives out awards for things like being "most dangerous", etc.), and a new scoring system similar to Pinball FX2's "Superscore" system (it adds up all of your lifetime stats in to one overall score for the friends leaderboard). But it was specifically the improved graphics - the addition of lightbloom and what looks to be (to my eyes) a more detailed shadowing system - really made me wonder why more companies who port their old shooters to XBLA don't make an effort to update their graphics.

With companies like id making their old engines open source after a while, often you'll find a group of crazy programmers out there who take it upon themselves to keep those games up to date. Not just functionally, but graphically, as well. Sometimes these packs don't always turn out the best, but when they do, it's actually pretty impressive what has been accomplished. Just look at Doom and Quake:

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But the one I think is most impressive is eDuke32 with "HRP" (High-Res Pack) and Duke Plus enabled:

Whenever you see a company re-release one of their old shooters on a modern console, the primary thing that stops me from buying in to them is the fact that you get this kind of stuff on the PC. Dig out that old dusty copy of Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, and after transplanting it to an updated engine, it almost looks like a brand new game. Why can't developers do this kind of stuff officially? How amazing would it have been if 3D Realms had updated Duke3D to look this awesome? A lot of the work has already been done for them - throw some money at the community, do a little bit of polish work, and publish that. I would re-buy Duke3D for $30 if 3D Realms went through and polished up eDuke's "High-Res Pack" to match professional standards (some of the monster models look pretty funky and could definitely use it).

And the best part about all of these projects is that they're still technically running on top of the original game data. While this means some general benefits (the game controls exactly like you remember), it also means that for purists out there, there is the all important ability to simply turn the new effects off. Or even better: pick and choose which updated effects you want to apply, and which ones you want to ignore.

But no way am I going to spend even $10 on a basic port of a game I already own. Admittedly, Duke 3D did try and include something new - a weird "rewind" feature, and Doom 2 for XBLA has a completely brand-new episode, but I can't help but feel these companies are missing an opportunity by ignoring what the communities centered around their old games have already accomplished.

And so far, Quake Arena Arcade represents the only game to even attempt to update the original's graphics in any shape or form, even if it is just a little lightbloom.

The internet is wild, an untamed wilderness. There are those who seek to tame it - and sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the Internet ends up biting back. There was a time where anybody and everybody could sign up for an account on Live365 free of charge and start their own internet radio station. For as long as I can remember, I've always been weirdly fascinated by broadcasting. The creation of TV networks and radio stations seemed really cool to me, and as a kid I would set a walkie-talkie next to my tape player and "broadcast" music to my friend across the street. The prospect of starting an internet radio station via Live365 interested me greatly, and I signed up and forged ahead, giving birth to "Blazefire Radio".
 
I never really grew up listening to "normal" music. I mean I guess I did at first, but soon my interest in audio/video equipment took hold and I was setting my Home Alone 2 "Talkboy" next to the TV so I could record music from Sonic 2's sound test mode, enabling me to listen to it later. If I would rent games and they had nice enough music, I would make sure to sit down and tape music from their sound test before returning the cartridge to the video rental store. As I got older, my methods got more advanced, and I learned how to patch game consoles through an old stereo system we had so I could get direct recordings straight from the hardware. While everybody else in Middle School was listening to Rob Zombie and some of Eminem's earliest hits, I was jamming out to hand-made mix tapes of Parappa the Rapper and Jet Moto. It shouldn't come as a surprise then that Blazefire Radio was populated almost exclusively by videogame music. With Earthbound songs over the bumpers, the station developed a tagline: "It's your sanctuary." Its popularity grew and eventually, BFR found itself as part of a collection of similar internet radio stations called the Zone Radio Network (or ZRN for short). ZRN provided hosting to network members, and an (awful) BFR website was established.
 
The Recording Industry Association of America, greedy as they are, didn't like that there were hundreds of people were using Live365 to stream licensed music free of charge (even though most of it was at extremely low bitrates - dial-up internet was still the norm, after all) and lobbied to get internet radio taxed by the same laws that govern over-the-air radio. Play a licensed song, you owe the RIAA xyz amount of dollars. Even though none of Blazefire Radio's music was governed by the RIAA, Live365 enacted sweeping changes that required everybody with a station to start paying subscription fees to stay on the air. ZRN tried to pick up the pieces by running their own, local Shoutcast internet radio broadcasting software, but restrictions on bandwidth and hosting space meant that all ZRN stations shared from the same collective pool of music. Stations in the network were re-tooled to specialize in specific genres of music, leaving little room for Blazefire Radio to sustain a unique identity. 
 
Deep down inside, part of me still wants to relaunch Blazefire Radio, but renting servers for that kind of thing cost exorbitant amounts of money. My Live Halloween Internet radio show, "The Graveyard Shift", was a chance for me to recapture a little bit of that magic, but diminishing returns year-over-year lead me to not even bother doing a show this year - not that I had a server to broadcast from anyway. 
 
Where I'm going with all of this is that I was recently turned on to this website called 8tracks. 8tracks lets you upload music and create a playlist from that music that anyone can listen to. To keep things legal, they have some pretty strict limitations, though. For example, no more than two songs from any given album or musician. There's a handful of others, but I managed to scrape together 108 songs to form a mix titled " Videogame Music Worth Listening To". It's about the closest thing to Blazefire Radio you're going to get today.
 

If you’re starting out with memories of the Sonic Rush games fresh in mind, Sonic Colors will be immediately disorienting. The game is built upon on the Sonic Rush engine, and though the basics of control remain somewhat familiar, nearly every aspect of how the player interacts with the world has changed. All of the leg stomps, slide kicks and wall jumps from the Wii version of Colors are present, but the biggest change from Sonic Rush is how the player charges up the the boost meter. In the Rush series, boosting not only sent Sonic tearing through levels at untold speeds, but made the player nearly invincible in the process. But in order to use the boost, you were first required to charge it up – done by executing long strings of acrobatic flips and spins via the game’s simplistic trick system. Sonic Colors retains the same basic concept of boosting and boost energy, but makes the player work a bit harder to charge it up. Boost energy is only acquired by picking up Wisp capsules that refill the meter or from destroying enemies. The net effect is that while in Sonic Rush you usually have enough energy to boost everywhere at maximum speed, Colors asks you to take things a little more slowly and conserve your energy – at least, until you figure out where all of the boost refills are located, and from there you can resume running around like a maniac to your heart’s content. This results in a far more gentle pace to ease new players in to the ultra-fast world of recent Sonic games, as the more experienced the player is, the more they discover ways to maintain high speeds for longer periods of time. 
 
Speed is all well and good, but can only take you so far. ( Keep reading...)

So earlier tonight, there was a pricing error on the Games for Windows Live Marketplace. Somebody forgot to carry a zero and Age of Empires III was listed for the low low price of $0.10. Given that I really like Age of Empires, I jumped on the chance. Amusingly enough, since I didn't have a credit card on file, it let me buy the game using Microsoft Points. Sure, 10msp is more money than $0.10 (by about 3 cents), but considering I still have 12,000msp to spend, it's not a big deal. To download AoE3, it asks me to install the GFWL Marketplace. That's fine, I guess - I thought I installed it when I installed FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, but since I uninstalled FOUC, it must've uninstalled GFWL with it. 
 
The program they give me on the page I bought Age of Empires III from boots up, and once it downloads the data required to install GFWL, it pops up with an error telling me that in order to proceed, I need the Games For Windows Live Redistributable CD. Now, to my knowledge, there is no GFWL Redistributable CD. GFWL is either installed from the web or it installs as part of a game installation. Putting this sort of thing on its own separate disc seems a bit silly. The error, however, was a familiar one. When Ashuku bought me a cheapo copy of Company of Heroes, it too had trouble installing, because at some point, one of the .NET Framework installations had gone awry.  It took me days to clean the bad install out and re-install a fresh, correctly-working copy of .NET Framework, but eventually I did. When it came time to install the first version of Games for Windows Live, .NET Framework pitched a similar fit, and once again, I had to manually correct the installation to get GFWL to work. When it came time to install that copy of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage I was talking about, GFWL attempted to simply update itself from within FlatOut, and surprise surprise, another, similar error. So I was used to this. 
 
Therefore, I went hunting. To fix the GFWL problem I had with FlatOut, it was a simple matter of browsing to the GFWL website and downloading the full GFWL install (this was the solution given by Microsoft themselves in a troubleshooting FAQ). For FlatOut, that worked like a charm. I was a little skeptical here - the GFWL Installer they gave me with my AoE3 purchase was actually from the official GFWL website. But still, I dug around, and found a link to the GFWL Installer from Microsoft.com (rather than gamesforwindowslive.com). The GFWL installer from Microsoft.com was of identical size to the one I was provided with my AoE3 purchase, opened what seemed to be an identical looking program, but managed to complete the install just the same. Hooray! Once completed, it asked me if I would like to launch the GFWL Client, and I obliged. 
 
The window disappears, and I alt tab around, browsing the internet and chatting to my friends. After what had to be at least 3-5 minutes pass, the GFWL login manager finally pops up. It already seems to know my login details (likely from FlatOut), so I tell it to log in.
 
Authentication error. 
 
Oh, that's probably because I changed my password since the last time I used GFWL. But it won't let me enter a new password. As it turns out, I have to uncheck the "Remember Password" box for it to let me enter a new password. I enter my new password. 
 
Authentication error. 
 
I uncheck "Remember my account". I type my Xbox 360 Gamertag instead of my email address. 
 
Authentication error. 
 
I re-enter my email address. I quadruple check my password. I type it one letter at a time, as slow as possible, making sure it is correct. 
 
Authentication error.
 
By now, I have entered every possible combination my account would be stored under. I have absolutely, unquestionably, entered my credentials the correct way. Right below the checkbox for "Remember my account" is a button cryptically labeled "Forget my account". I click that. It erases my email address, my password, and removes my gamerpic. I re-type my email address and password, and hit sign in. It signs me in! 
 
What? 
 
The login manager goes away and the Games for Windows Live Marketplace finally lays itself bare before me. It looks a lot like the Steam Marketplace. Before I have a chance to really browse, though, I notice something has gone awry. The HDD access light on my computer has gone solid red. The computer itself is grinding to a halt. It's the GFWL Marketplace. It is devouring my system whole. I can't do anything. I can't type, I can't switch to any other windows... for all intents and purposes, the computer is frozen. Minutes pass in this state. I get just enough control of my computer to type a message out in the chat room me and my friends hang out in.
 

<BlazeHedgehog> GFW LIVE IS AWFUL

You are running out of virtual memory! Windows is increasing the limit of your virtual memory paging file. During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied. For more information, see "Help".

<Doandl_Dukc> Goddamn
<Doandl_Dukc> aren't you glad you didn't pirate.

I've been posting reviews here day-and-date with TSSZ, but this is a fairly important review to me, so it's going to be up on TSSZ exclusively for a while. I hope you understand. You can click here to read it, and here's a sampler to whet your appetite: 
 

In theory, using proven concepts should make Sonic the Hedgehog 4 a game that would be difficult to screw up. Unfortunately, it’s lacking in one all-important aspect: the controls. A key, defining factor of the 16-bit Sonic games was the sense of momentum they presented. Running down slopes would help Sonic to accelerate, and running up a slope would cause Sonic to slow down a little. The steeper the slope, the more pronounced the effect, and rolling in to Sonic’s trademark “spinball” form would only increase his slope sensitivity. A well-timed spin would allow Sonic to blow through levels at far faster speeds than he could ever achieve by running on foot. When Sonic transitioned to 3D, the franchise moved away from these concepts in favor of scripted scenes and row after row of booster pads bolted to the floor of ever level. This is where Sonic 4 picks up, and though it makes a half-hearted attempt to re-implement these momentum-based controls, to a Sonic veteran, it’s endlessly disappointing that rolling in to Sonic’s ball form is mostly useless outside of specific scripted scenes where the game automatically forces you to roll, and things get aggravating about the time you reach a pinball-table-styled level like Casino Street and Sonic does not appropriately control the way a pinball should. This is to say nothing of the game’s stiff, sluggish acceleration, which can make even simple platforming puzzles awkward to complete. These are Sonic Rush controls, on a game that you can’t really play like Sonic Rush. ( Keep reading)

So like two months ago I said I was going to write more blogs. And I didn't. You can blame twitter for that, I guess. It makes it a lot harder to care about writing a blog when I get all of my thoughts out in 140 characters or less, and qualitative discussion about videogames is better served with reviews. I don't even remember what I wanted to write more blogs about - I guess at one point I wanted to write about Starcraft 2, but then my SC2 buddy moved across two states and I don't think either of us has picked the game back up. Not that I could, anyway. I didn't buy SC2, and the guest pass he gave me has undoubtedly expired by now.  I don't even remember what it was that I wanted to say, other than it started with the familiar "I don't really care that much about RTS games, but". But that doesn't mean I don't have a reason to talk about videogames! Because I do.
 

Hey duders. Have several blogs churning in the ol' noggin that I want to write, but I figured this could be its own separate thing. You may remember back in late May/early June where I was told that I won some stuff? Well it finally came today.

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