The Nintendo entry, almost
Nov. 10th, 2007 07:41 pmLet's see what I have on my list this time...
"See you in Hell": Hm, I'll save that for when I beat Metal Slug 3.
Speaking of Metal Slug 3, I came very close to the final boss (or so I think) last time I played, but it's now been several days. Because the lounge has been constant Zelda since then. First Youlian started playing Wind Waker, then Aaron started replaying Majora's Mask, then Peter started playing Ocarina of Time. However, we don't have a SNES. (Though we *do* have Julian's Xbox... but I'm not about to start ALttP now. Maybe after Metal Slug, though...) Although, Youlian actually got sufficiently fed up with Wind Waker that he deleted his game.
The other game very much on my mind right now is Super Mario Galaxy, which looks amazing, and early reports from the GHZ confirm this[0]. It comes out in 2 days, but no Wii have we. However, John Wood said he might just bring his over just so we can play it here. Yay! He also alerted me to Zack & Wiki, a game which... he didn't actually know anything about. It's this game that... I don't know, he says. Just... something with a lot of hype in certain circles. But... what is it?
Well, Esrever describes it as follows:
Zack and Wiki is great.
Basically, it takes the control style and item-based puzzle solving of your classic Lucasarts point and click titles and grafts it to a very traditionally-structured, "Capcomy" videogame (ie: levels, boss fights, deaths, high scores.)
You're dumped into each stage with no explanation of what to do and nothing in your inventory. But everything you need to complete it is in the stage somewhere. You have to examine your surroundings, search for any available items, figure out how to make them work, and then use them to navigate through the stage.
What makes the game so cool is that you can't just force your way through the puzzles... you can't just randomly use items or press buttons or pull switches until you accidentally stumble your way through the stage. Because for every correct action in the game, it feels like there are hundreds of wrong actions that result in your grim, horrible death. You are freely given the option to do many, many things that, if you actually thought about them beforehand, are incredibly stupid and will almost certainly kill you. You can also inadvertently do things in the wrong order and thus completely screw yourself over.
Zack and Wiki rewards you for paying attention to your environment and using your brain. The correct solutions to the puzzles are not always easy to figure out, but they are almost always logical conclusions that can be reached entirely through observation and examination of the stage and its items. You just have to actually think about what you are doing. "Why am I pushing this rock down a hill? Is it to knock that tank of water into that pit? Do I WANT to fill that pit with water? Is there something else I should put in the pit first?"
It's the solid, logical puzzle solving that makes the game so satisfying to complete... and also, so infuriating when you get stuck. Once you finally find out what you were missing, it almost always seems obvious and almost always makes you feel like a moron.
As you'd probably guess, the pointer works fabulously for this kind of game. As for the motion controls, they are limited exclusively to the use of items, and actually add a dimension to the puzzle solving. Unlike most point and click titles, you have to figure out more than just where to use an item... you also have to figure out HOW to use it once you get there. What I've seen so far hasn't been especially complicated, but the motion controls for each item have usually been logical and have responded well.
Very cool. And maybe John Wood will pick up a copy?
...OK, enough of that. What else is on my list?
Oh, here's something interesting. Girl Alex is hardly in Tufts anymore. This is the girl who last year was known as "the mob boss of Tufts House". Some of the second-years seem actually scared of her (though as I was a first-year with her, I think this is pretty ridiculous). Anyway, what's funny is, she's so rarely in Tufts anymore... so the first-years, by and large, don't know her. So when she is here, they don't really react to her. And the first-years, as always, make up a lot of Tufts House. So the sense of "This is Girl Alex. You do what she says" is markedly diminished. She's not interested in maintaining her dominion, apparently.
What's next... "γ". Oh, this is something weird Alperin mentioned in Rep Theory. Right, so G a finite group, χ an irreducible character, then χ(1) divides the order of |G|. Now, the proof we're using is that, we prove that |G|/χ(1) is an algebraic integer, and so since it's rational, it's an integer. And he says, there are other proofs - such as ones looking at the p-part of χ(1) and showing it divides the p-part of |G| - but nobody has yet found a simple interpretation of |G|/χ(1) that directly demonstrates that it's an integer. Well... not quite. So you consider the function γ:G→Z⊆C given by γ(g)=|{(a,b)∈G×G|aba-1b-1=g}|. Now this is a class function, so we can write it as a linear combination of irreducible characters. And it turns out (and it's not very hard to verify) that the coefficient of χi is |G|/χi(1). But these are all integers, which means γ is a character. But of what? Nobody knows. (Well, I mean, yes, it's a character of the direct sum of etc... but YKWIM.) So if you could find a way of, given a finite group G, directly finding a representation that had γ as a character, then you would have just also directly proven that the coefficients |G|/χi(1) are integers, and have a nice interpretation for them! But nobody has yet found a way to find such a representation, or show γ is a character without using the fact that the |G|/χi(1) are integers.
Next on my list is "Ryan". This entry has gone on long enough already, so, I'll save that for another time, if I ever get around to it.
Meanwhile, my Twilight Struggle feud with Colin has yet to resume. This is starting to annoy me. Also, it turns out I'm missing a red settlement from Settlers. Me, Peter, Youlian, and Winston were playing and Youlian was unable to expand due to lack of settlements... and then I noticed he only had 4 on the board. I have no idea where I would have lost it, though. Also, I saw a thread on BGG about how the tiles Falsche Fuffziger are misprinted - some of those with 150s on the backs are supposed to be 150x2s. I haven't fixed this yet, but counting out the tiles, I noticed one of the 150 Münzen tiles is missing! I have no idea how this could have happened, seeing as, well, this copy has yet to actually be played. :-/ Speaking also of games I own but have not played my copy of, I almost got Pow Wow out yesterday, but then people sort of disappeared.
Oh, and my parents got me a copy of Axis for my birthday, so, well, I guess I'll read it. :P
-Harry
[0]Of course, I'm not exactly playing new video games much, but even without direct confirmation I do tend to trust most of the GHZers as they tend to actually talk intelligently about video games.
"See you in Hell": Hm, I'll save that for when I beat Metal Slug 3.
Speaking of Metal Slug 3, I came very close to the final boss (or so I think) last time I played, but it's now been several days. Because the lounge has been constant Zelda since then. First Youlian started playing Wind Waker, then Aaron started replaying Majora's Mask, then Peter started playing Ocarina of Time. However, we don't have a SNES. (Though we *do* have Julian's Xbox... but I'm not about to start ALttP now. Maybe after Metal Slug, though...) Although, Youlian actually got sufficiently fed up with Wind Waker that he deleted his game.
The other game very much on my mind right now is Super Mario Galaxy, which looks amazing, and early reports from the GHZ confirm this[0]. It comes out in 2 days, but no Wii have we. However, John Wood said he might just bring his over just so we can play it here. Yay! He also alerted me to Zack & Wiki, a game which... he didn't actually know anything about. It's this game that... I don't know, he says. Just... something with a lot of hype in certain circles. But... what is it?
Well, Esrever describes it as follows:
Zack and Wiki is great.
Basically, it takes the control style and item-based puzzle solving of your classic Lucasarts point and click titles and grafts it to a very traditionally-structured, "Capcomy" videogame (ie: levels, boss fights, deaths, high scores.)
You're dumped into each stage with no explanation of what to do and nothing in your inventory. But everything you need to complete it is in the stage somewhere. You have to examine your surroundings, search for any available items, figure out how to make them work, and then use them to navigate through the stage.
What makes the game so cool is that you can't just force your way through the puzzles... you can't just randomly use items or press buttons or pull switches until you accidentally stumble your way through the stage. Because for every correct action in the game, it feels like there are hundreds of wrong actions that result in your grim, horrible death. You are freely given the option to do many, many things that, if you actually thought about them beforehand, are incredibly stupid and will almost certainly kill you. You can also inadvertently do things in the wrong order and thus completely screw yourself over.
Zack and Wiki rewards you for paying attention to your environment and using your brain. The correct solutions to the puzzles are not always easy to figure out, but they are almost always logical conclusions that can be reached entirely through observation and examination of the stage and its items. You just have to actually think about what you are doing. "Why am I pushing this rock down a hill? Is it to knock that tank of water into that pit? Do I WANT to fill that pit with water? Is there something else I should put in the pit first?"
It's the solid, logical puzzle solving that makes the game so satisfying to complete... and also, so infuriating when you get stuck. Once you finally find out what you were missing, it almost always seems obvious and almost always makes you feel like a moron.
As you'd probably guess, the pointer works fabulously for this kind of game. As for the motion controls, they are limited exclusively to the use of items, and actually add a dimension to the puzzle solving. Unlike most point and click titles, you have to figure out more than just where to use an item... you also have to figure out HOW to use it once you get there. What I've seen so far hasn't been especially complicated, but the motion controls for each item have usually been logical and have responded well.
Very cool. And maybe John Wood will pick up a copy?
...OK, enough of that. What else is on my list?
Oh, here's something interesting. Girl Alex is hardly in Tufts anymore. This is the girl who last year was known as "the mob boss of Tufts House". Some of the second-years seem actually scared of her (though as I was a first-year with her, I think this is pretty ridiculous). Anyway, what's funny is, she's so rarely in Tufts anymore... so the first-years, by and large, don't know her. So when she is here, they don't really react to her. And the first-years, as always, make up a lot of Tufts House. So the sense of "This is Girl Alex. You do what she says" is markedly diminished. She's not interested in maintaining her dominion, apparently.
What's next... "γ". Oh, this is something weird Alperin mentioned in Rep Theory. Right, so G a finite group, χ an irreducible character, then χ(1) divides the order of |G|. Now, the proof we're using is that, we prove that |G|/χ(1) is an algebraic integer, and so since it's rational, it's an integer. And he says, there are other proofs - such as ones looking at the p-part of χ(1) and showing it divides the p-part of |G| - but nobody has yet found a simple interpretation of |G|/χ(1) that directly demonstrates that it's an integer. Well... not quite. So you consider the function γ:G→Z⊆C given by γ(g)=|{(a,b)∈G×G|aba-1b-1=g}|. Now this is a class function, so we can write it as a linear combination of irreducible characters. And it turns out (and it's not very hard to verify) that the coefficient of χi is |G|/χi(1). But these are all integers, which means γ is a character. But of what? Nobody knows. (Well, I mean, yes, it's a character of the direct sum of etc... but YKWIM.) So if you could find a way of, given a finite group G, directly finding a representation that had γ as a character, then you would have just also directly proven that the coefficients |G|/χi(1) are integers, and have a nice interpretation for them! But nobody has yet found a way to find such a representation, or show γ is a character without using the fact that the |G|/χi(1) are integers.
Next on my list is "Ryan". This entry has gone on long enough already, so, I'll save that for another time, if I ever get around to it.
Meanwhile, my Twilight Struggle feud with Colin has yet to resume. This is starting to annoy me. Also, it turns out I'm missing a red settlement from Settlers. Me, Peter, Youlian, and Winston were playing and Youlian was unable to expand due to lack of settlements... and then I noticed he only had 4 on the board. I have no idea where I would have lost it, though. Also, I saw a thread on BGG about how the tiles Falsche Fuffziger are misprinted - some of those with 150s on the backs are supposed to be 150x2s. I haven't fixed this yet, but counting out the tiles, I noticed one of the 150 Münzen tiles is missing! I have no idea how this could have happened, seeing as, well, this copy has yet to actually be played. :-/ Speaking also of games I own but have not played my copy of, I almost got Pow Wow out yesterday, but then people sort of disappeared.
Oh, and my parents got me a copy of Axis for my birthday, so, well, I guess I'll read it. :P
-Harry
[0]Of course, I'm not exactly playing new video games much, but even without direct confirmation I do tend to trust most of the GHZers as they tend to actually talk intelligently about video games.
