Sunday, March 11, 2007

Staying Tuned

Paula and I have played midway through the fourth episode of Sam & Max from Telltale Games. I've waited this long to post something about the series because of my fundamental blogging laziness, a reverence for the old Sam & Max Freelance Police game, and reservations about the new episodic gaming format in general. It's taken me a few months to overcome all three weaknesses.

Not that nostalgia for the glory days of Lucasarts adventures is a bad thing, mind you. Those games deserved all the praise they get, as I think I mentioned in a previous post. But sometimes fondness for the old can blind you to the goodness of the new.

That's not the case here. Telltale games have gotten it exactly right: They deliver compact, well-written adventures on a monthly basis. (They got the third episode to us a week early, in fact.) I settled in to the game right away, and was soon rewarded with more wacky one-liners and obscure non-sequiturs than I could shake a mixed metaphor at. Sam and Max are back, and the episodic format suits the rabbit and dog duo extremely well.

This season ends after another two episodes. I hope their experiment in reviving a classic gaming genre will be judged a success. It's a model that would work for all the adventure gaming greats. I'd like to see a few of my other favorites revived as episodic adventures, too.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

What the buzzword of 2007?

The last thing we need is another buzzword. Every year has one: ERP, CRM, Web2.0.....

I hate to encourage the development of yet another bad label, but thought I would posit the question: What will the buzz word for 2007 be? Web 2.0 is so 2006 (or heck, 2005!) what is the buzz for 2007?

Some thoughts from Read/Write web on that matter, branded Web 3.0 would be (that Web 2.0 is not). In brief: Web 2.0 + Context. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_30_4cpvs.php

Crystal ball time: What is the buzzword of 2007?