Peter Wooley’s Blog

My Top Picks may be a little late (2007 was so last last year), but my research of these items really went all the way up to end of 2007. I began writing this article in December of 2007, but finally finished it here in the second half of 2009.

Best PC Game: Portal

Portal, released by Valve Software and bundled in The Orange Box, has been a source of several late nights. This puzzle-gone-wild game takes game mechanics as they have been and shoots a hole right through ‘em. The one astonishing feature that makes this game incredible is in its title, the magic of portals. Armed with a gun capable of shooting two connected portals, you can fire one portal onto a wall next to you and one in the ceiling high above you and when you run into the portal next to you, you’ll come out of the portal above you and fall to the ground. It’s a fairly simple idea that becomes complex quickly, both in the physics of the portals themselves, as well as the mind-bending solutions to the puzzles.

When I first heard about a team of students who hacked the Source engine to create Portal, I was more than a little interested. Once I saw the concept implemented in an early version of the game, I knew it was something awesome, possibly novel to video game-dom. Upon seeing it, I had to get to the bottom of how it was done. While I gave up much quicker than I should have back then, the developers gave me a treat, as developer commentary was included in the game that overlays narration by the developers and graphic enhancements to explain concepts as you play through the game. I can’t say I could code the thing myself, but I have an understanding of how the portals work and am still as mystified by them as I was before.

Someday, I’d love to see the gun integrated into Half-Life.

Best Wii Game: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

I know, I know, Super Mario Galaxy was the Game of the Year, and I do love it, but Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock for the Wii provides such an emotional high when you rock out on your guitar controller and become one with the song. There is literally a moment, when you’re playing a song that’s a real challenge, where the song seems to slow down and the colored notes seem connected to your fingers.

The Easy, Medium & Hard modes offer a pretty gradual learning curve, which fit my play style as well as that of my wife, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, other brother-in-law, and even father-in-law. Expert, on the other hand, was a real challenge. I still remember the moment I beat Slow Ride—the first song in Expert—standing in the living room of Kara’s parent’s house, lights off, not expecting to make it through the final solo. Somehow, perhaps magically, I beat it with 3 stars. While I continued through Expert mode and beat a few of the sets, beating Slow Ride I’ve yet to beat Through the Fire and Flames on Expert and assert my claim as the true Guitar Hero.

A couple of years ago, before I knew PHP or any back-end language, I really wanted to keep a World of Warcraft Journal—a pictoral journey through my travels in Azeroth. Knowing my way around XHTML and CSS, I designed a page, marked it up and started cataloging the beauty of WoW. As the images started to add up, I realized I had no paging system and no way to update the site without modifying the mark-up. After around 30 pictures, it was too much to handle, and I let it go.

Well, I’ve decided to give it another go; this time, with a little more knowledge under my belt. I haven’t been playing very much WoW, so the first thing to do was to start again. I gave myself a few hours this weekend and actually attempted get some questing done. It was an exhilarating experience. The next thing to do was to design a system for uploading images, text, quotes, conversations, and a few other things, with a nice design, RSS, and easy management. Knowing I couldn’t do that, and based on my fascination with mini-blogging, I decided to scratch and itch and give Tumblr a go.

It was worth it. Tumblr allows for stupid-simple management of mini-blogging, and it even makes it look good. It has image, audio, and video upload support, and has a beautiful API. I was even able to connect it up to a custom URL with a simple A-record in my DNS.

And, voila!, Peter’s WoW Journal is re-born: http://wow.peterwooley.com

I didn’t get to bed just as quickly as I suspected I would. I was unexpectedly invited to slay the outdoor raid boss known as Kazzak. He roams in the Tainted Scar of the Blasted Lands.He’s a weenie. With a 35-man raid, we took him down in less than three minutes. That’s fast. Apparently, if he stays alive for longer than three minutes, he blows up or blows you up or something to that effect. So, it’s a good thing he was a weenie. Unfortunately for me, I received none of the loot, except for 3 gold 45 silver. It was still fun, but he definitely is a weenie.