Gaming

Gaming — 2 Comments
18
Jul 09

The trouble with Wii Fit

I loved the idea of Wii Fit from the moment I heard it. On paper and in the ads, the concept is brilliant:

  • A fun exercise “game”.
  • An innovative peripheral, the balance board, providing bio feedback and enabling a whole new class of exercise and gaming experiences.
  • A full set of exercises including yoga, strength, cardio, etc.
  • The usual, super cute design we expect from Nintendo.

Wii Fit promises to provide a fun way to exercise and keep in shape, all in a very sexy package. So, what’s the problem?

The initial user experience is very, very good. You pair the balance board and right away you’re tested with tests based mostly on balance. The assumption is that balance is a good measure of your overall core strength, fitness, etc. Since the balance board can weigh you, you first get your BMI and a rather dry assessment of your current state, where it’s quite easy to be overweight, even for little kids. Then you do the randomly selected balance tests and are assigned your Wii Fit age, which is disclosed with great fanfare. My initial Wii Fit age was a sobering 59. Quite depressing for an active 40 year old. But I digress… the point here is that right away you see your goal: to lower your Wii Fit age. The game also asks you to set up a 2 week goal, usually expressed in a target weight. Having done all this, on with the gaming… Continue reading →

Gaming / Movies / Uncategorized — 4 Comments
23
May 09

The Best Online Traffic School?

After paying my red light ticket, the epic story described in a previous post, the San Mateo County Southern Branch Court provided me with a list of about 80 approved online schools. Which one to choose? I expected the Internet in all its collective wisdom to provide the answer with a comprehensive site of traffic school reviews including all sorts of evaluation criteria (price, time to complete, use of animations, etc) and user rankings. To my disappointment, no such site seems to exist. I was faced with scanning a large list of URLs to pick a traffic school.

The first approach was to start entering URLs in the browser and try to deduce, from the home page, whether the traffic school would be right. Here’s the list of schools approved by San Mateo County:

http://www.ctsi-courtnetwork.org/home_studies/san_mateo_county/index.html

An ideal traffic school for me would be:

  • Responsive. Pages load fast. No stupid artificial delays like I experienced many years ago when I tried an online traffic school.
  • Efficient. Don’t bug me with graphics, animations, games. Show me the information and let me take the test.
  • Not sneaky. Tell me how much it’s going to be and avoid hidden charges.
  • Try before you buy. Let me see what the content is like before I have to commit.

The third URL I tried look good, much like a few others, the price was competitive ($19.95) but what clinched the deal for me was that I could take the whole course and pay at the end. No risk for me: try the course and stop at anytime if I get annoyed with it.

The winner had the most appealing name: Easy, Fast, Cheap, Online, Traffic school. Here’s my short review of my traffic school experience. Continue reading →

Gaming — 1 Comment
6
Apr 08

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 for Wii: Absolutely Brilliant!

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 for WiiPro Evolution Soccer (PES) 2008 on the Wii is the best soccer video game ever made. Konami has used the unique control mechanisms afforded by the Wii to great advantage to revolutionize soccer games, resulting in the most advanced soccer simulation to date.

EA’s FIFA was first out of the gate with a version for the Wii that did use the Wiimote-nunchuk combination to some effect, but their effort was merely evolutionary. It felt like the traditional soccer game with a couple of wiimote waving additions. I played it for a couple of weeks and then forgot about it.

I’ve had PES for a few weeks and I can’t stop playing it. It’s all due to the revolutionary control system. I have to admit that seeing the demo movies and reading about the controls was a bit overwhelming. The display is full of arrows, circles and other indicators that at first seem to distract from the actual action on the pitch. I wondered whether the control system could work at all, whether it could be managed by a normal player. Given the respect I had for Konami going all the way back to ISS Soccer on the Nintendo 64 and all the versions of Winning Eleven I knew I had to give this one a try.

In a nutshell: the control system works and the resulting game play is brilliant. Continue reading →