The following picture is from a Microsoft sponsored event about Windows Mobile.

Notice anything?

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Go find all of the Girl Talk albums and download them right now. RIGHT NOW. You can tell them you'll pay 0 dollars and they'll let you download. I'm going to pay eventually - this stuff is c1assic sample-mash techno.

I downloaded two of them, and I also bought the Fleet Foxes Sun Giant EP for $5 on Amazon MP3. Yay.

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In my usual fashion I've gravitated back to my Sansa Clip. No real reason. Well, I think it's because the UI is faster than the one on the iPod Nano, even if it is a little ugly.

I noticed that I get annoyed when I have a lot of albums on any MP3 player. The less I have, the happier I am with the device. It gets hard to navigate between a hundred albums when you only listen to two. This is probably why I move from one to the other - they get cluttered, so I clean the other one instead of cleaning the one i'm using, and voila - I've swapped to a new MP3 player because I'm stupid.

Oh, and if you're ever needing of an MP3 player, the Sansa Clip+ is probably the best thing you can possibly buy. The first one is still amazing (great music quality, FM, voice recorder, etc.), and the Clip+ makes the package unbeatable. If you see any on sale or on clearance, grab one or two. I nabbed a 8GB Clip (not plus) for $50, and it's still a good thing to use when I'm sick of my iPod.

Also, Amazon is a liar. the 4GB Clip+ is not usually $80; it's usually $50.

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I bought a few more cheap books. I'm reading through Siddhartha, which is surprisingly compelling and a little bit of fun. After that, I go back to Wilde with Dorian Gray, and then back even further to Sherlock Holmes and The Valley of Fear.

I'm gravitating away from games at the moment. Ah, well. I find good ways to entertain myself either way.

A gaming blog? Yes. This one makes up for the other random blogs I make. It's long.

I've been reading Malstrom's blog for a good half an hour now, just going down the line and seeing what he has to say on many subjects. And again, I disagree and agree with him on many fronts.

-I disagree with what he considers "good."

There are two types of gamers in the world: the tourists and the challengers. The former like to see things, experience things, and think in new ways. The latter like to throw their mind at a challenge until it is solved. Malstrom is of the latter group. And while there is nothing wrong with that, he rants from the perspective of someone who cannot see why a tourist gamer mentality is fun.

I am halfway between a tourist and a challenger. I dislike uninteractive games, but I like games that convey a space.

I loved MGS, but it was better in MGS3 when the "game" part really kicked in (I'm not bothered by it's half movie, half game thing that it subscribes to, though). I hate modern JPRG games, aside from Persona (which doesn't really count - it's Animal Crossing meets Dragon Quest). I love the old school RPG games where you work and slaughter and beat the living hell out of anything that moves. I also love some types of "high score" games, like Audiosurf or Galaga. Simple, fun, and endlessly enjoyable.

I also like Half-Life 2 and its ilk; shooters that convey a space - filled with things that Malstrom calls "doodads," like story, atmosphere, and context. But see below for why I like some sorts of doodads. (And if you like this next bit, see the Doom Bible for the design documents of probably my favorite shooter of all time, if it were to exist.)

I've often said that a game's main character is the environment it takes place in. This is why Bioshock frustrated me - while complex visually, archtecturally and gameplay wise the world was no more than a few interconnected hallways. Visually, it was wonderful, with rooms filled with just amazing things to look at, and palces you could just drink in for minutes. But it was all window dressing for what amounted to Halo's level design (which amounted to big piles of uninteresting boxes copied endlessly down either a narrow space or an epic space)..

Metroid Prime, on the other hand, felt truely alien in both visual spectacle and level design. This is why MP2 and MP3 were such disappointments to me: they were rote, uninteresting and bland. The gameplay and combat was unchanged, but the environment no longer evoked that certain special touch that turned it into something worth exploring. This goes for most of the Metroid games, as well as the Castlevania bunch on the GBA (not the DS, those were horrid, aside from the above average Dawn of Sorrow). These games craft materpieces around their environments, using story and context to wield them effectively, while atmosphere is just a side effect of good landscaping.

The same can be said for Mario games. My favorites of the series are the ones where the levels are iconic, memorable, and interesting - not because it looked fancy, but because it made an environment worth exploring. I think Malstrom was close when he said that Galaxy wasn't all that it could be, but I disagree when he says that Super Mario 64 wasn't as good of a game as people say. It was excellent because the spaces you could explore were detailed, magnificent, and just fun to play in. When I was younger I could play for hours in Bob-Omb Battlefield, not actually completing anything, but exploring as if I was playing in a sandbox. The world's were so well constructed that the whole "collecting" gameplay mechanic was overcome by the sheer spectacle and joy of every level. Galaxy took that away somewhat by focusing too much on the collecting, something the Rare 3D platformers did as well (which in the case of Donkey King 64 spelled out their impending failure to innovate).

This is partially why I'm interested in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. But I need to find out more before I pay $50. Does it offer me a world to play in? Or will it tap into that challenger part of my brain (which activates at random times and is something I don't fully understand quite yet)?

-Malstrom does not like the "games industry." He always puts it in quotations, because I'm not entirely sure who he means to identify by that phrase.

Oddly enough, I don't like them either. Which is why I have such difficulty making a mental argument for myself so that I can buy a PS3 or 360. None of the games look interesting, nor do they excite me to the point where I need to have the game. Even Metal Gear Solid 4's sweet call has been muffled by the $330 entrance barrier (and the fact that the thing is more movie than game - not a bad thing, just a little deflating).

What else will I play on the monster? GTA? Same old nonsense. Uncharted? Same old nonsense. Resistance? Same old nonsense. If I sound cynical, good. I'm a cynical gamer.

I don't like industries. I don't like corportations. I don't trust them, and I'm unconvinced that such a business model (or an economic model) can fully establish either success or even innovation. I think msot of the good games on bthe PS2 were entirely accidental, or even outside of the games' industry's reach.

Want an example? I'll give you two:

Music. I haven't bought a big-label CD since The Mars Volta, and even my fandom of that is becoming a wash. The modern FM Radio (controlled by the overpowered Clear Channel and its minions) will daily send a stream of derivative nonsense that sounds exactly like the crap they played last year. Cases in point: Nickelback, Kings of Leon, Miley Cyrus, and Black Eyed Peas. Uncreative is a generous adjective. Hell, they remix songs and play those on the radio when you can't take that Kings of Leon screed "Use Somebody" anymore. It's not the artists' fault, though; I doubt they have much choice in what they sing or say at this point.

Movies. How sad is it that movies are lauded for being special and new and exiciting when this new special exciting motion feature is something like that POS Star Trek movie, where they ripped off every Sci-Fi movie from the past decade into suck a murky soup that nothing made any sense anymore? How sad is it that the movie industry has given the green light on remakes of movies that came out in the 90's? These people have no new ideas. If they do, they don't use them.

The good thing about both of these industries is that, especially in the case of the music industry, the world doesn't need them anymore, thanks to the instant satisfaction and information movement of the internet. Expect to see the music industry matter less and less. Movies still cost too much to make, though, so that might take some time to kill.

I theorize that the PC will be the new Indie music labels for gaming. PC gamers don't care about the Games Industry and their derivative drivel and nonsnese. They want the goods. Valve and Blizzard and Stardock, they deliver. The indie developers, they deliver. And thanks to Steam and it's DD ilk, any old Audiosurf game made by a single developer can be on the distribution level of Modern Warfare.

And that's why the games industry fears the PC. Not because of piracy, but because they have to compete with actual innovation. And they can't.

The Wii, Malstrom claims, is not in the "Games industry." I disagree. It is. But it's the new "Mac" of gaming. The Mac is in the computer industry, and most people wish it well, but everyone secretly whishes that the marketplace would choose a single path for profit already, and hopefully it will be a good one. Too much fragmentation will kill off a profit base, as any anti-Linux troll will tell you. Whatever. Much like Apple, Nintendo has become the place for you to get Nintendo. You can't get it anywhere else. And if you could, would you still care as much as you did?

The difference between what Nintendo does and what Activision does is that Activision copies what it did yesterday, and Nintendo copies what it did three decades ago. The only reason why we care about Nintendo so much is because we can't remember when they did the latest 2D Mario game with the polish and pizazz like this, and if we do remember, it was because it didn't exactly have much competition at the time. I find it horribly ironic that those old games that Nintendo likes to copy are utterly brilliant and do deserve copying, but those were made in a world devoid of competition for their games. Would we be better off in a world where profits matter less than artistic achievements?

Yes, which is why I echo Malstroms call to end the "Games industry." See the music and movie industries to see how uncreative they will soon become, if they haven't already.

-The one thing I don't like about Malstrom is his melodramatic flair. A company in this instance does not "betray" a customer. That would suggest that they actually intended on betraying the customer, which they didn't. It's like saying that the modern music industry intended to betray the people who like music that isn't crap. They're not interested in those people; they want those who will run right up to the feeding tubes, cash in hand, regardless of the quality, and do what they're told.

If you're not at the feeding tubes when the dinner bell is wrung, the industries couldn't give a damn about you. I bet they don't even know you exist.

-Another thing: He likes "more" than he likes "less." Ugh. When he said that, I threw up in my mouth.

There's no need to take twenty-seven pages to say what could be said in two, even with the internet's unlimited space. Unfortunately, while we can have unlimited text, I do not have unlimited time to read his work.

I know there's irony in the fact that I've written a novel of a blog post, but I don't think I've said anything that doesn't need to be said to make my points clear.

I found it entertaining when a friend of mine bought Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance and attemtped to install it on his computer, despite fate, the trees outside our window, the TV, and God almighty himself were all telling him to turn back. The CD key wasn't in the case, his DVD drive didn't work well, on and on.

When he did play the game, it was plesently beautiful, and ran well until he started actually playing the game like they wanted him to. Thousands of units in your army? That's just mission two. By the time he reached the thousand unit mark (where he was already locked in what appeared to be a war of attrition) his computer was gasping for water, and the game ran at the speed of a English-professor-controlled powerpoint.

Supreme Commander 2 appears to continue this patriotic duty of absolutely murdering every machine it comes into contact with. I mean, look at the damn thing.

Now if only they could make the game not suck so I could love it as much as Total Annihilation. Pleeeeeeeeease?

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I read The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Widle, a book that I picked up for $1.50 from my bookstore. Witty, clever, and ridiculous. I'll be quoting it for years.

"You cannot eat a muffins in any other state than a calm mood."

I paraphrased, and I guarentee the actual thing is far funnier. Excellent play.