Don Wakamatsu, a 45-year-old Japanese-American, has become the manager of the Seattle Mariners. Formerly a minor leaguer and a bench coach, Mr. Wakamatsu is the first Asian-American manager in any of the four major sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL). I’ve always believed that the Mariners would be the most likely team to hire an Asian coach because of all the Japanese stars like Ichiro, Kenji Johjima, and Kazuhiro Sasaki that have been through their system. Not only that, but the team itself is owned by Nintendo and has many ties to the Japanese market. It is a little ironic that Mr. Wakamatsu probably knows less Japanese than Bobby Valentine though. Anyway good luck in fixing the worst team in baseball. がんばれ若松さん！
People may or may not know that the Xbox 360 is getting a major system update on November 19, so I’ll shed some insight about the whole thing. I was recently accepted into the New Xbox Experience Preview Program and will be able to try out all the new features before they open it to the world this coming Wednesday. Some of the new features include Avatars, Netflix video streaming, an install-to-hard-drive feature, and of course a revamped layout. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with this substantial upgrade that will probably change the console forever (not that you’ll be able to go back to the old “blades” system though).
So the new public demo of Left 4 Dead came out a few days ago and I finally got a chance to play it last night. The hotly anticipated title from Valve Software is only a week away from release and I have to say, the hype is meeting my expectations so far. I’d already ordered it off of Amazon.com months ago, but after hearing so many positive things about the game up to this point, I couldn’t resist waiting for the full version and gave it a go on my trusty PC (the demo is out on Xbox 360 as well, but as most of you know I have “problems” aiming with an analog stick).
Valve has done a great job again following the release of The Orange Box last year and have produced a stellar game that not only fills a hole in the co-op gaming spectrum, but highlights a trend that I hope continues for years to come. In an age where first-person shooters have become generic and bland, Left 4 Dead is innovative. Each time the experience is different due to the “AI Director” that they’ve implemented in the game. Simply the Director knows when the group moves to a new area and determines the type, volume, and difficulty of enemies based on the skill and current health of the group. Each time you play, the available weapons and health kits may be different as well.
Technically, Left 4 Dead is built on the Source engine which means hardware requirements scale all the way down to lower-end computers, but still looks great on the most powerful machines out there. I found that even my mid-range desktop (Core 2 Duo @ 2.67ghz + ATI HD3870 OC) performed very well with all the details turned up. Logistically it was easy to find buddies that were already playing and join their game in progress without needing to use a server browser all the time. Overall the game boils down to the co-op gameplay which for the most part excellent. When I could gather three other people to play with, I had a lot of fun even though I was playing through the same two levels every time (which I did probably 5 times). I expect that the full experience (which launches on November 18th) will be even better with varying objectives and scenarios.
Since I forgot to do a post on the previous episode, I’ll just combine it with this one. By now you probably know that people in Prison Break Land eventually die when they run out of usefulness. However when they’re key parts of the humor of the show, you hate to lose them. That’s exactly what happened the last two episodes. We’re quickly losing humorous characters on the show, so I hope they pick up more people soon. Anyway here’s a brief clip from last night’s episode.
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