gaming

shadowzack knows his games a lot better than I do. Even though he says it’s “crap”, I’m enjoying playing Bond 007: Quantum of Solace on my Wii. I only play about one game a year, so I’m not ashamed to go looking for a bit of help in shadowzack’s walkthroughs:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15 (Last)

A walkthrough can be better than a cheat, which is good because I didn’t find any.

Richard Moore’s Pac-Txt is even more brilliant than his Paper Pong (which, ironically, you can play online).

Here’s a transcript of my best Pac-Txt game to date:

Pac-Txt!
--------
You awaken in a large complex, slightly disoriented. Glowing dots hover mouth level near you in every direction. Off in the distance you hear the faint howling of what you can only imagine must be some sort of ghost or several ghosts.

> go east
Huh?!

> look
You are in a long corridor. You may go forward or backward and there are glowing dots in every direction. There is a glowing dot hovering near you. 

> eat
You have eaten the glowing dot!

> go forward
Huh?!

> forward
You have moved.

> look
You are at an intersection. You may go forward, backward or right and there are glowing dots forward and right. There is a glowing dot hovering near you. 

> eat
You have eaten another glowing dot!

> check score
Huh?!

In another sign that my generation’s culture is gaining dominance, NPR gave video games a bit of coverage this morning. Unfortunately, the story that makes it sound like the company invented playtesting doesn’t suggest that Microsoft’s behemoth investment in the Halo franchise makes that testing (and, perhaps, blandness) necessary. (Meanwhile, MSNBC last year ran an off-message story about how playtesters declared the Wii the top console.)

Reality: Playtesting is one of those dream jobs that people scour Craigslist for or start questionable-looking services around. As a side benefit, it improves your vision.

Rebecca Nesson, speaking via Skype and appearing before us as her avatar in Second Life, offered her experiences as a co-instructor of Harvard Law School‘s CyberOne, a course being held jointly in a meatspace classroom and in Second Life, and open to students via Harvard Law, the Harvard Extension School, and to the public that shows up in Second Life.

Nesson has an interesting blog post about how it all works, but she also answered questions from the audience about why it works:

As a distance learning environment it’s head and shoulders above anything else because of levels and types of interactions possible versus any previous tool.

It’s a poor format for lectures, but a great format for discussions, so it really encourages conversation and discourse.

It’s a community that exists independent of the class meeting. In here we have much more of those liminal times when people are just hanging out. …We have more opportunities for interaction.