Favorites of 2009 – Additional Details

A few days ago, I posted my choices for my “Favorites of 2009″.  Today I wanted to take some time to shed some added light on some of my choices.

Restaurant (National Chain): Chop House

I don’t eat at Chop House all that often, because let’s face it, it’s pretty expensive.  However, I have found myself eating there more often during the past couple of years than I used to.  Although I’ve heard a few negative reviews of it from time to time, the food and service have both been outstanding every time I’ve been there.  It’s not a place I eat at on a daily or even weekly basis, but it’s very enjoyable when I do, and it has become one of my favorite restaurants in Kingsport.

Restaurant (Fast Food): Pal’s

Until recently, I hadn’t eaten at Pal’s all that often for more than a year.  Believe it or not, I was trying to be more careful about how much fast food I ate.  However, I’ve recently started eating at Pal’s more often again, and I was quickly reminded of just how good their food is.

Restaurant (Local): China Wok

I believe this is my first repeat winner from last year.  I eat at China Wok once a week, and it’s far and away my favorite locally owned restaurant in Kingsport.  Their food is a higher quality than most other Chinese restaurants in town.

Movie: I Am Legend

I think this movie was released prior to 2009, but I watched it for the first time in 2009.  I thought I Am Legend was good, but not great.  The reason I picked it is because I try to pick a fairly new movie to present this award to, and I just don’t remember seeing any outstanding new movies in 2009.  If I included all movies that I saw for the first time in 2009 in this category, regardless of their age, I would have picked the 80s horror movie Cube.

T.V. Show: Destination Truth

I love Ghost Hunters, which won this award in 2008, but I’ve come to like Destination Truth even more.  It’s simply more interesting.  Something that can’t be explained seems to happen in every episode.  Could they be faking it all?  Sure, but it’s still exciting.

Destination Truth doesn’t focus exclusively on ghost hunting.  They investigate all sorts of unexplained phenomena, including bizarre creatures (in the ilk of Bigfoot).  My favorite episode was probably the one where they investigated Chernobyl.

Video Game: Dragon Age – Origins (X360)

I actually just finished this game last night but it was hands-down my favorite console game I played in 2009.  It’s very much like a traditional computer role-playing game, only with the controls tweaked a bit to fit the X360 controller.  The combat, inventory system, story, and all other aspects of the game are outstanding.  I liked it much better than Fable 2 or Fallout 3.  And it absolutely beats the socks off of Mass Effect.  The first expansion pack for Dragon Age is slated to be released in March, and I’m looking forward to it.

PC Game: Torchlight

This game was released in the latter part of the year, and I have only been playing it for about a month.  It’s basically Diablo I with better graphics.  It’s even from some of the designers who worked on Diablo (and Fate).  Don’t be dissuaded from trying Torchlight just because it’s more like Diablo than Diablo II.  It’s a ton of fun, and it only costs $20 (you can even get it for $9.95 if you catch it on sale).

Card Game: Phase 10

My new favorite card game of 2008 (Rage) failed to repeat as the winner in this category in 2009 simply because several of my friends disliked it so much that we never played it again.  I didn’t figure I could give a “Favorite of 2009″ award to a game I didn’t play in 2009.  So, Phase 10 wins this year.  It’s a great game too.

Board Game: Loaded Questions

Deciding the winner in this category was a tough decision.  Why?  Because I realized when I was picking the winners that I don’t remember playing any of my actual favorite board games during 2009.  I don’t think I played Scattergories, Sorry, or Oh What A Mountain! at all.  But I did play Monopoly, and now that I think about it, it would have won this category if I’d thought of it when I made up my list.

Don’t get me wrong, though – Loaded Questions is a good game and it’s a lot of fun.  It’s one of those games that asks a lot of different questions (some of them revealing), and challenges one of the players to figure out who wrote down each answer.

Electronics Store: Circuit City

Despite being out of business, Circuit City is still my favorite electronics store.  I don’t shop at Best Buy unless it’s absolutely necessary (i.e., if they have something I need in a hurry that I can’t find anywhere else).

Website: Facebook.com

I still seem to spend more time on Facebook than I do on all other websites combined.

Sporting Event: Fall race at Bristol

A couple of years ago, we almost let our Bristol tickets go because I had decided that fighting the crowd and the long walk wasn’t worth it.  I was wrong.  As the date of the race grew closer, I realized that I would really miss it if I wasn’t at the race.  It’s now become my favorite sporting event once again.

Amusement Park: James H. Drew Exposition (Appalachian Fair)

I’m probably as shocked as you are that Dollywood didn’t win this award.  You’ll probably also be shocked to learn that I didn’t visit Dollywood in 2009.  I can’t remember the last time I went a full year without going to Dollywood.  But none of my friends bought season passes, so I didn’t either.  I didn’t even find time to take the once a year trip that I usually make with mom and dad.

So, the James H. Drew Exposition at the Appalachian Fair wins the award.  It’s really a carnival instead of an amusement park, but it’s a large one.  And it’s impressive.  The rides are in better shape than in any traveling carnival I’ve ever seen.  In fact, they are in downright pristine condition.  The folks who run the Drew Exposition deserve to be commended.  It’s easy to see that they work very hard to keep their midway in tip-top shape.

TV Station: TV Land

Although some of my favorite shows are on SyFy, our TV seems to be on TV Land more than any other station, especially when the Andy Griffith Show is on.  A few days ago, I said that TV Land probably wouldn’t be my favorite station in 2010, but that was because I thought they were going to stop showing Andy Griffith.  That lasted a week before they put Andy back on.

Food:  Crab Cakes

This selection ties back into my favorite chain restaurant (Chop House).  My favorite dish has become the crab cakes with burgundy mushrooms and Parmesan spinach.

XBOX 360 Thoughts

A few weeks ago, I posted that I was thinking about buying an XBOX 360.  I did so a few days later, and I’ve been gaming on it for a few weeks now.

I’ve been primarily a PC gamer since I bought my first PC around 1992 – a 486 with probably no more than 16 MB of RAM.  While I bought a Playstation 2 a couple of years after they came out (mainly to play Final Fantasy X), the PC remained my main gaming machine.  Rightly or not, I always viewed PC games as being more in-depth and complex.  The PC always seemed to be a little bit ahead of the consoles when it came to the quality of the graphics as well -  as long as you were willing to spend the money to keep your PC upgraded.

As consoles continued to advance and gained capabilities such as hard drives, improved graphics, and outputs for high-definition TVs, the PC didn’t seem to have as many advantages over the consoles any longer.  Many games, especially highly-anticipated ones, were released for both the PC and consoles.  In fact, some of them came to the consoles first and weren’t ported to the PC until months later.

The main thing that caused my decision to buy an XBOX 360 was that I realized my 18-month old PC was already falling below the recommended requirements for many new games, and that it was already time to upgrade my PC again  if I wanted to play the newest games at an acceptable level of performance and graphical detail.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I priced a PC that would do everything I wanted it to, and the price tag was $4,000.  An XBOX 360 Elite was only $400.  Since most of the games I wanted to play were available on both the PC and XBOX 360, it was an easy decision to make considering the cost of each system.

So, now that I’ve been playing the XBOX 360 for a few weeks, what do I think of it?  I’m very pleased with it so far.  The only game I’ve played on it is Fallout 3, because it’s such a good game that I want to finish it before I start playing another game (I’ve purchased Fable 2 already, and the system came with free copies of Lego Indiana Jones and, um, Kung Fu Panda. )

Besides the cost of the console being so much cheaper than a new gaming PC, another thing that is really nice is that when I buy a game for the XBOX 360, I know it’s going to run properly.  It’s refreshing not to have to research system requirements before buying a game, and not to spend  hours installing, patching, troubleshooting, and configuring the game before I can play it.  I also discovered that I got used to using the XBOX 360 controller instead of my preferred mouse/keyboard control scheme a lot quicker than I expected to.

All of this being said, I haven’t stopped gaming on my PC.  However, my PC gaming has  shifted towards more casual games, as well as some good free games that are now available online.  My main gaming system is now the XBOX 360, as that’s where I think I’ll get the most “bang for the buck”.

Warhammer Offline

After I wrote the post below, I realized that it will probably only be interesting to PC gamers.  If you’re not a hardcore player of PC games, you can probably skip this post 

A few weeks ago, I bought the new MMORPG Warhammer Online.  I love the game, but unfortunately, I had to cancel my account.  While it’s nice to eliminate a $15 per month recurring charge from my bills, that’s not the reason I canceled.  Rather, I finally became so fed up with the poor performance of the game that I had no choice but to stop playing.  I didn’t want to, but the performance issues were so severe that they ruined the game for me.

I should note that the system I’m trying to run the game on is pretty beefy.  It’s 18 months old and doesn’t have a dual-core processor, but it has 2 GB of RAM and dual 256 MB video cards connected via SLI.  That should be more than good enough to run even a brand-new game with some of the detail settings turned down.  My system meets not only the minimum requirements to play Warhammer Online, but it exceeds the recommended requirements in many areas.

There are several reasons that I believe the problem is with the game and not my PC.  For one thing, if I set the graphical resolution to the minimum and turn all of the detail settings as low as they will go, the performance is exactly the same as it is when I’m running at maximum resolution and maximum detail.  The fact that the game doesn’t run any better when I turn down the graphical settings tells me there’s something seriously wrong with the game engine.

Another reason I believe the problem is with the game is that a lot of other people are having the same problems.  I’ve read a lot of posts on message boards where people with better computers than mine aren’t faring any better.  There doesn’t seem to be a common thread among the folks that are having trouble, either.  Users of ATI and nVidia graphics cards, Intel and AMD processors, and Windows XP and Vista have all reported problems.

Finally, while I realize it is a slightly older game, LOTRO runs great on my PC at high resolutions and high detail.  So does another new MMORPG that came out just a few weeks before Warhammer Online called Requeim: Bloodymare.  To draw another comparison, BioShock runs great on my system as well.  In fact, I’ve never had performance problems with any game on this computer other than Warhammer Online.

Something else I find puzzling about Warhammer Online is that there aren’t a lot of opportunities to provide feedback to the developers or to interact with other players, especially when compared to other MMORPGs.  There aren’t any message boards on the official Warhammer Online website at all, something I’ve never encountered with any other MMORPG.  Something else that jumped out at me was that when I canceled my WoW and LOTRO accounts in the past, they thanked me for the time I spent as a customer, assured me that my characters would still be on their servers if I ever decided to resubscribe, and in particular, they asked me for my feedback as to why I was canceling and what they could have done better.  When I canceled my Warhammer Online account, I clicked the cancel button and it basically said “OK, your account in canceled”.  I know that some people would find it refreshing that it is so easy to cancel an account, but it bothered me that they didn’t even give me the opportunity to provide feedback if I wanted to (which I did).  It’s as if they don’t care if players cancel their accounts.

In my last post, I discussed how I was considering buying an XBOX 360, and I can now say that I’ve done it.  In my next post, I’ll discuss the reasons that I’m transitioning from the PC to a console as my main gaming machine for the first time since such a thing as a PC came into existence.

Generation XBOX

While I own a PlayStation2, I’ve primarily been a PC gamer ever since such a thing existed. However, I now find myself considering buying an XBOX 360. That’s something I never thought I’d do. When the original XBOX came out, I was one of the people who thought it was nothing more than a stripped-down PC.

However, I’ve recently realized that my gaming PC doesn’t meet the recommended requirements for new games that are coming out – despite the fact that it’s only 18 months old. Several of the new games I want to play are available on both the PC and XBOX 360. I checked to see how much I’d have to spend to get a new PC that will do what I need it to do and also be a viable gaming system for at least 3 years, and the cost was staggering – over $4,000. An XBOX 360 Elite is one-tenth the cost, at $400. So, it’s easy to see why I’ve begun considering the XBOX. It’s a much cheaper alternative to play the games I want to play.

That brings me to some questions I’d like to ask my readers:

1. What are the advantages of an XBOX 360 over a PS3, and vice versa? Which do you recommend?

2.  If you have experience playing both the PC and XBOX 360 version of the same game, what differences should I expect to see when playing a given game on the PC vs. the XBOX 360?

3.  I found a peripheral that will allow you to connect a keyboard and mouse to an XBOX 360 and play games that way.  If you have experience doing this, does it work well?

If you have any answers for me, please post in the comments!

Brent the SingStar?

Recently, my friends got me into playing the SingStar karaoke games on the PS2. The interesting thing about that is that up until a few weeks ago, it had literally been around 20 years since I had attempted to sing. The last time I remember singing before I tried SingStar was with the youth in Church when I was in middle school. Needless to say, being 20 years out of practice means I’m pretty rusty when it comes to singing, especially considering that I never was much of a singer to begin with. However, the SingStar games are so much fun that they helped me overcome my fear of singing within earshot of other people.

I also got the chance to try Rock Band on the Xbox 360 last night. I’d never played Rock Star or any of the Guitar Hero games before, and it surprised me how much fun it was. I only tried the bass guitar part on easy and medium skill level, but I really enjoyed it.

I’d like to get Rock Star for myself, but the only console I have is a PS2, and I’ve read in reviews that the PS2 version of the game is very stripped-down. So, I’d have to invest in an Xbox 360 or PS3, the Rock Band game and instruments, plus an additional guitar controller, since Rock Band only comes with one. I don’t think I can justify spending the several hundred dollars that would require.