Toluu

Kaz

Games, Cars, Movies and Life ..........

Obsessive BehaviorSeptember 17

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but having a lateral g-meter in your car and driving on public roads is like giving a kid a firecracker and telling them not to set it off on days that end in “y”. I’ve spent many of my lunch breaks trying to find twisty roads nearby to really test out the car and have been keeping a leaderboard of sorts of my maximum lateral g pulled.

It’s a little blurry (the iPhone has a decent camera but lacks the ability to take a macro shot), but that’s my new record: 0.88g. It was a hell of a right hander, marked 10mph with a yellow sign that I may or may not have completely ignored. The car is rated to .91g on a flat surface, but on a track or regular roads that pitch with the turn it’s capable of upwards of 1.3g, which is faster than falling, but sideways so it’s much more frightening.

Cah Tawk: Driven Right Out of the GameSeptember 8

 

As I had predicted, my blog will every now and then get overrun by a little shop talk. Last Friday I finally got the call to come down to my local dealership and pick up the car I’ve been waiting months for. For those of you who don’t follow my every breath and thought: I picked up a 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbocharged (as pictured in my driveway above).

I’ll no doubt drivel on about my car on a future blog but for now one feature stands out among the rest to prove to me that this is the car for a video gamer who wants to go fast.

Generally speaking, I do not know why I would need to know the barometric pressure. In case you were curious, my personal best lateral G reading has been .51, apparently the car goes to .91…I don’t have the cojones for that.

On the A-pillar (the column to the left of the windshield that blocks your view of the small children you run over) resides what Chevy has conveniently called a “Reconfigurable Performance Display”. Which wouldn’t be convenient usually, but is merely because the next best description, “Small LCD That Tells You a Myriad

Unfinished BusinessAugust 21

I’ve been developing a bad habit. I’ve started no less than four blog posts, and left them unfinished. And they aren’t just a couple sentences. I spent far too much time on these posts and quickly became distracted by the next. The end result being a complete and utter lack of any of these posts actually getting posted.

To keep myself honest I’m listing them here. Out in the open I’ll feel more compelled over the next week to finish them out and post.

E3 2008: Please Adjust Expectations Accordingly

Life with my iPhone

How driving my car is going to be more like Forza and GT

Text Adventures: Why aren’t modern game choose your own?

Beyond that I have a lot of ideas that I want to post about. However, writing blogs will quickly come into conflict with enjoying my new car. So expect some car talk to make its way into my blog, I hope no one minds.

Upcoming ideas: Heavy Rain/Left 4 Dead: My Raging Game Boners, GC2008 Leipzig: Bigger is Better?, Hard Luck: How I fried my 5th computer.

P.S. I mourn the loss of LeRoi Moore, saxophonist for the Dave Matthews Band, having seen him perform 7 years in a row I don’t know what my next DMB concert will be like without.

A Matter of MaturityJuly 7

All right gamers, it’s time to talk about something we all fear and despise: time to talk about love.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how romance is handled in video games. At its worst it is a goal, a feather to place in your cap, an objective a gamer heartlessly conquers. At best: it’s an awkward subject. I’m thinking about how games display affection based on our comments in last week’s podcast, and my experiences finishing Metal Gear Solid 4. 

Last week I said that while it was nice that Mass Effect tried to handle a relationship in a realistic way, it improperly rewarded you with points for getting your character laid. When I thought about the action in that light; I became kind of disappointed in Bioware. After defending them in the “Sexbox” scandal I feel kind of betrayed in retrospect. 

Is there a way accurately represent a romantic relationship between characters in games? Surely every JRPG under the sun has tried, but in those games you don’t control the story so much as you ride along with them. And last October’s RPG The Witcher probably wasn’t

My Tale Part Three: The Return of the Cha-chingJuly 3

I was disheartened by my experience at the used car lot. It seemed I would have a difficult time ever finding a used car I could get excited about that also fit my budget. I resigned myself to prepare for a long journey to find a car.

 I consoled myself by retreating to my parent’s house for some comforting words and free dinner. But it was there that I found the solution to my problem.

I was lamenting that I could never find a used car that I wanted because it was a stop gap solution. I was only getting a used car to bridge the gap between now and my future new car when I had an apartment with safer parking. I was dejected and just wished I was in a better situation so I could get the car I wanted. Of all the people to present a solution; my mother told me what to do.

She said: “Your sister purchased the car she wanted when she graduated college and got stuck with car payments for a long time, she didn’t put anything down on the car and it was a mistake. Your father purchased his Trans Am as soon as he graduated and ended up paying for getting what he wanted.”

I was biding my time to interject that I didn’t care about dealing with the financial mess for a little happiness, but she continued:

“I didn’t get the car I wanted straight of of college, I had my father help me purchase a used Dodge Dart that we got a really good price on. The payments were low and the car wasn’t perfect but it saved me a lot of money at the ti