Yeah, thats right. For many months I was borderline on getting an Xbox. I figured my Wii was good enough and I didn’t need another system, but I secretly lusted after its myriad online features that the Wii simply will NEVER have. The straw that broke me (or the camel) was when I saw an announcement for a game called Pinball FX. Holy shit. This wasn’t some cartoony gimpy video pinball knockoff. This was an ultra-real pinball simulator that I can definitely see myself losing many hours of my life to. And it was ONLY for Xbox. When I got my Xbox Elite online, that was the first title I bought on XBLA. I still play it when I get frustrated with stupid Uno players, or need a break from Mario Galaxy.

Why is this post relevant today? Because Zen Studios released a new pirate themed table called Buccaneer (released on Halloween, actually). I would have gladly paid two or three hundred points for this download. But you know what? They gave it to us for FREE. I played the table for a good half-hour and haven’t quite figured out all the dynamics. There’s a flipper that seems pointless, and I haven’t triggered any insane scoring modes. But the table looks and behaves beautifully. Plus, it has a cool piratey soundtrack with a nice bass line.

Now with four tables to play, Pinball FX is an easy purchase to recommend. Arrrr!

Buccaneer Table
Metacritic reviews (Harsh!)

Originally this post was supposed to be about how great Amazon Unbox on TiVo is. When I saw a new movie featured for only $.99 (rental), I snatched it up right away. The cost was right and within one click the movie was available on my TiVo by the time I’m ready to watch it. I figured this would be a great supplement to my Blockbuster Total Access account moving forward. Honestly, everything was as smooth as promised, right up until I actually watched it. Before I get into it, let me paste this little clip from Amazon’s website from their “FAQ for Unbox”:

How does the quality of Unbox videos compare to the quality of shows recorded by my TiVo DVR?
Unbox videos watched on a TiVo DVR are of equal or better quality than videos recorded at the Best Quality setting on a TiVo Series2 DVR.

So, it’s “equal to or better than the BEST quality setting on my TiVo”? This is an outright LIE. I am using a TiVo Series 3 HD Recorder on a widescreen TV. The movie I downloaded was NOT anamorphic. This means that if you watch it on a widescreen TV, it will have black borders on both the sides AND top and bottom of the screen. No combination of zoom modes from the TiVo or my TV would result in a picture that wasn’t stretched, cropped or degraded significantly. I ended up watching the movie in this “windowed” mode, feeling like it’s 2003 all over again. But it’s not, it’s 2007 and Amazon and TiVo need to get this fixed IMMEDIATELY. 2 years ago I went through my DVD collection and sold off ALL my non-anamorphic titles. People don’t have to worry about this anymore as most new release DVD’s are non-anamorphic already. HD-DVD and BluRay are most definitely non-anamorphic and those technologies are already over a year old! Amazon unbox was released just this past summer, so they have no excuse to not offer this functionality.

I will not be renting or buying (not sure who’s “buying” movies that can’t move off their TiVo) any more Unbox movies until they address this atrocious problem. You’ve been warned.

Finished Portal last night. Definitely one of the best games ever, for a short game that is. Probably about 4 hours long. I just love the attention to detail Valve puts into their software and this one was no exception. It was very funny, and had just the right level of difficulty. Not too hard to frustrate you, but you’re not exactly running through the game either. For the uninitiated, the premise is simple. Here’s a gun that you fire into a wall, floor, etc. Fire another shot on another wall, and they are now connected (think wormhole). Valve could have left it at that, but they enabled the portal with rules of physics. Fall through a portal on the floor, and you’ll continue “falling” even if the other portal is facing up. It sounds confusing, so just visit Wikipedia for more info.

For those of you who have finished the game, here’s a site with all the quotes from the game (Spoiler Warning!)
WikiQuote Portal