Blog: Articles filed under Christmas

I’m going to skip my usual rant about the Christmas season and go straight to the part where I talk about all the fun material goods I acquired.

Oodles and oodles of chocolate and candy, firstly, which is never a bad thing. Plus some movies, season 2.0 of Battlestar Galactica, some nail clippers, some desk calendars, and some games for Xbox 360.

What was that? Xbox 360—surely Ben doesn’t have an Xbox 360!

I bought one today. (For those of who aren’t commonwealth, today is Boxing Day, and is usually the beginning of a week of mad discounts, similar to the American Black Friday.) I got Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Assassin’s Creed for Christmas, and then the console came with Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Forza Motorsport (which doesn’t really interest me), Halo 3, and Two Worlds. Then I bought Viva Pinata for some light-hearted multiplayer fun. So I am decked out for games now.

The Xbox 360 is actually part of my evil plot to do more things with Real Life people™. There’s not a lot to do when I have people over—watch a movie, some tea, look up funny clips on the Internet. Hopefully having a gaming console will provide another alternative. I‘m not much of a gamer, so we’ll see how Xbox Live treats me. My gamertag is (predictably) tachyondecay, if you know me and also have an Xbox—although please tell me who you are, either via the friend request or IM, otherwise I won’t add you.

I don’t return to school until January 7. So the next week will be spent trying to do things with friends before the break is over, playing with my Xbox, working, and yes … trying to bludgeon myself into working on the various projects I have going. Lately I‘ve just been having trouble staying focused. I want it done, but I don’t want to do it.

Merry Christmas (not “Happy Holidays”)!

Merry Christmas.

I had a pretty good Christmas, all things considered. Excellent turkey … enough candy to hospitalize me … good movies. I got Star Trek: Legacy and Sid Meier’s Civilization IV.

If you were thinking of buying Star Trek: Legacy, let me save you the time: don’t. I am not overreacting. In the short time I played the game I found it to be utterly dissatisfactory. Firstly, there is no intro scene, no exciting opening cinematic, except for an overly-long one for the developer, Mad Doc. Secondly, the mouse behaves with jerky movements on the menu, making any action twice as hard to execute. In missions (which can’t be saved while in progress) the controls are confusing, the graphics are lacklustre, and any good things were siphoned from Star Trek: Starfleet Command III. There is no coherent tutorial, just a series of hint screens that inconveniently disrupt gameplay during the mission—so I have no idea what I‘m doing. Incidentally, there’s nothing to indicate that the game is paused after I press “Pause” except the fact that the Romulans stopped shooting at me.

Civilization IV, on the other hand, looks exciting. I only tried out the tutorial before I packed it in and wrote this. It seems like a cool combination of turn-based strategy game, like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and Age of Empires. I love both games, so although I’ve never played a Civilization game I am really keen on beginning this one.

Interesting observation about packaging. Star Trek: Legacy comes in a huge box with one DVD-ROM disc. The box, however, has a bunch of flaps for multiple discs. Tell me, does this make any sense? Why give me all this extra plastic? You could have shipped it in a single case! And then it goes and takes up 5 GB of storage. Now compare this to Civilization IV. It has three CD-ROM discs, one of which is filled with instruction manuals and doesn’t actually pertain to gameplay. It takes up only 1.7 GB of space, and each disc comes in an envelope instead of being housed in a huge plastic waste of space.

So to recap: Star Trek: Legacy was so poorly executed in every respect, from gameplay to packaging, that it isn’t worth much of a thought other than the fact that apparently the Star Trek franchise is ailing in more ways than one. Civilization IV, on the other hand, is good.

I’m going to go to bed now, since I might want to go see if there are Boxing Day deals tomorrow. Maybe. If I’m awake.

I‘m not talking about the religious significance, nor what Christmas represents. Nor am I talking about how retail outlets like to turn Christmas into a commercial venture and media circus. That’s been done ad nauseum.

I‘d like to point out that Christmas, however, is quite silly if you think about it. Let’s take this “good will” and “Christmas cheer” idea. We‘re supposed to have extra good will toward people and be extra cheery, eh? Isn’t that admitting that we weren’t as good willed and cheery as we could have been the rest of the year? I maintain that it would be better to be happy and have good will toward people for one’s entire life instead of one month of the year. Really.

And that’s what I dislike about Western culture. Eastern cultures seem to have the right idea. They may seem a bit strict with some things, but they are like that because they constantly appreciate things all the time. Conversely, the West has this weird tendency to go on “binges” of celebrating when they indulge in appreciation of a subject to the excess for a few days/weeks instead of appreciating it year-round. It really underlines a fundamental flaw in this whole materialistic mode of thinking.

That’s just my thoughts on Christmas (not the holiday, the season). It’s silly to be extra cheery because one should be very cheery all year; it’s silly to be extra kind because one should be very kind all year. I think that’s a bit more realistic and probably better for our pysches than enforcing a week of happiness and good will each year during the most depressing season.

My friends, crazy that they are, combined three major holidays and tacked an extra “day” on the end to make the uber-politically correct version.

Not very materialistic, I hope, I won’t list the Christmas presents I got, because it’s the thought that counts… . But I did like them. Particularly Age of Empires III, and the DVDs Serenity and the Firefly series. Now I need to convince my dad to go for a 14-hour marathon of the Firefly episodes.

Have a very merry Christmas, anyone crazy enough to read this blog!

We got our Christmas tree today (a real one, not artificial). So we spent time trimming it. I toyed with the idea of not doing my English homework. “Ms. Burton, I did not do my homework because I was trimming our tree.” If she said that was unacceptable, I could claim she was discriminating against my religion.

Here’s a picture of the tree taken with my hugely crazily bad-quality webcam. I’m planning on rectifying my lack of digital imaging abilities by purchasing a digital camera after Christmas.

Merry Christmas to anyone insane enough to visit my site.

Merry Christmas to Elaine, Tovan, and Mak. You know who you are. Stargate SG-1 marathon in 18 hours, Tovan! Twenty-two hours of SG-1 Season Six! Muwahahahaha