Gone but not forgotten

I saw an article on the Luxist today that claims that a 29 year-old Port Ellen cask strength scotch took the top prize at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. One of the things the article thought was notable was the fact that the distillery was closed in 1983, so obviously there is a very limited supply of this whiskey and no more on the horizon. The Port Ellen distillery used to be located on Islay… which just so happens to be a place I know a little something about.

My book on Islay scotch distilleries, oh that’s right – I am casually referring to a beverage myopic book that I just so happen to have laying around on the subject – because that’s how I roll. My Islay scotch distillery book says that Port Ellen was shut down by Diageo Corporation which also owns the Caol Ila and Lagavulin distilleries on Islay. The scotch market crashed during the 80’s and over production was a big problem - it was pretty common to stop distillery production. Diageo just took things a bit further by tearing out the stills (in the 90’s) and leveling the building in 2003.

The book bemoans the fact when they decided to close Port Ellen it had only been running for 16 years. At the time most Islay scotch were used for blending so it was the blenders who decided which one of the three Islay Diageo distilleries were going to go. They basically choose Port Ellen because its oldest spirit was only 16 years old. At the time the distillers suspected that Port Ellen was a slower maturing spirit than most. It was speculated that it would really come into its own around 18 or 20 years. But with the other two distilleries being better established and having proven maturing track records, Port Ellen was a bit of an unproven underdog. So they closed it. Looks like those old distillers knew their craft and are now vindicated.

As a side note, Ardbeg was closed at about the same time as Port Ellen and all but followed its example. Fortunately, it managed to avoid Port Ellen’s grisly fate and eventually reopened in the 90’s. Today it is a bit of a success story on the island proving that a down and out distillery can be rehabilitated. But really isn’t the moral of the story that you can have enough peaty scotches? Yes, I think it is too.

When Dawn and I were on Islay it was pretty easy to find Port Ellen scotch. Heck, I think even the gas station had it (the gas station had a surprising selection…plus there are no traffic cops). I think we tried an 18 year-old Port Ellen while we were there. It was good. Compared to non-Islay scotches it probably was even great…but that island offers up some pretty stiff competition. We discovered that our tastes run towards 10-12 years-old and cask strength for most scotches. Knowledge is power.

What’s that? …do I happen to have any photos sitting around of the old Port Ellen warehouse? I’m glad you asked. I sure do. The big grey building in the back is The Maltings which peats barley for the island. When its running the town of Port Ellen smells exactly like heaven. Also this very location is just a few minutes stumble from a really excellent Indian restaurant and a hotel bar with a kick’n venison pie. Which just goes and proves what I’ve been saying all along - that Islay is probably the most perfect place on earth.

Has anyone heard of this hot new trend?

Wired Magazine has a pretty good article about Settlers of Catan and German board games in general penetrating the US market. There aren’t a lot of surprises in it for people who have been playing German board games for years.

Here are a few highlights for people to lazy to follow the link and read the story.

Germans, it turns out, are absolutely nuts about board games. More are sold per capita in Germany than anywhere else on earth. The country's mainstream newspapers review board games alongside movies and books, and the annual
Spiel board game convention in Essen draws more than 150,000 fans from all walks of life.

Because of this enthusiasm, board game design has become high art—and big business—in Germany. Any game aficionado will tell you that the best-designed titles in the world come from this country. In fact, the phrase German-style game is now shorthand for a breed of tight, well-designed games that resemble Monopoly the way a Porsche 911 resembles a Chevy Cobalt.

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German-style games, on the other hand, avoid direct conflict. Violence in particular is taboo in Germany's gaming culture, a holdover from decades of post-World War II soul-searching. In fact, when Parker Brothers tried to introduce Risk there in 1982, the government threatened to ban it on the grounds that it might encourage imperialist and militaristic impulses in the nation's youth. (The German rules for Risk were hastily rewritten so players could "liberate" their opponents' territories, and censors let it slide.)

Instead of direct conflict, German-style games tend to let players win without having to undercut or destroy their friends. This keeps the game fun, even for those who eventually fall behind. Designed with busy parents in mind, German games also tend to be fast, requiring anywhere from 15 minutes to a little more than an hour to complete. They are balanced, preventing one person from running away with the game while the others painfully play out their eventual defeat. And the best ones stay fresh and interesting game after game.

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But part of the reason we don't play much Risk and Monopoly as adults is that those are actually poorly designed games, at least in the German sense. Derk Solko, a garrulous former Wall Streeter who cofounded the Web site BoardGameGeek.com in 2000 after discovering Settlers, explains it this way: "Monopoly has you grinding your opponents into dust. It's a very negative experience. It's all about cackling when your opponent lands on your space and you get to take all their money." Monopoly, in fact, is a classic example of what economists call a zero-sum game. For me to gain $100, you have to lose $100. For me to win, you have to be bankrupt. Gouging and exploiting may be perfect for humiliating your siblings, but they're not so great for relaxing with friends.

BSGood Riddance

Battlestar Galactica is over. Thank god. Of course the fact that I’ve been watching a show that I haven’t been enjoying for two seasons probably says something sick and perverse about me. I guess knowing that the end was around the corner was enough to make me come back and “finish the show.”

In short, I found the last few episodes and the finale to be very unsatisfying. The last few episodes were basically treading water because they had the story where they needed it for the finale and they didn’t actually need or evidently want to advance the plot. The penultimate episode had needless flashbacks for crying out loud! They were blatantly just killing the clock. But enough of that. I’ll spend a bit of time nitpicking it later on…but first let me address the more grievous crimes of the series.

I’m addressing the big picture here so I’ll be painting with a broad brush. In the end I found BSG to be ultimately disappointing because I feel betrayed by the series. The show started off as one of the best shows on televisions. As such, I threw my support behind it and praised it to anyone who would listen. It was that most rare of science fiction endeavors, one that realized the key good science fiction revolves around stories and characters that would be interesting regardless of the setting. The setting just so happened to be sci-fi. But along the way something changed...

The crime I charge BSG with is around the 2nd and 3rd season the show changed from an interesting sci-fi show into a poetic meditation on faith. I’ve talked to a number of people who enjoyed the end of the show. I think it may have something to do with how you view actions based on faith when in obvious contradiction to reason.

The motivations and actions of the characters stopped being coherent and understandable, they were no longer grounded in reason - they just started to do whatever felt right. This had all sorts of consequences. Characters changed jobs at a drop of a hat. Where at once the survival of humanity and the conservation of scarce resources were paramount…they now had time to dedicate a ship and a crew to finger painting in space looking for music. The goals of various groups and factions in the show swung drastically from episode to episode. No hair-brained scheme would be denied if it had a poetic justification. Ultimately the show ended clumsily with the heavy handed message that faith is all important and technology is evil.

Now to pick on the last episode a bit…

Who are undeniably the best pilots in the fleet? Perhaps people who have served as CAG during the course of the show… well guess what…now they’re marines! That’s right in this toughest of tough battles they decided to turn their ace pilots into marines? I guess that’s a military tactic.

They’ve been pedaling that opera house metaphor for how long now…. That shared hallucination between all the pivotal members of the cast…and it that was it? Some kid running threw a ship? Talk about an anticlimactic build up.

Whereas the fleet was tearing itself apart just a few episodes ago, to the point where the Galatica suffered a mutiny, does anyone believe that all the people would be of one mind about anything? Everyone wants to ditch technology for the chance to have a new beginning and rough it on fake earth? Yeah right, screw medicine that stuff is for chumps. It’s been holding us back. How can anyone be happy with all the knowledge and learning? Time to scuttle that garbage.

Seriously does anyone in their right minds think that Ty and Ellen are going to let them send the last bars in the galaxy into the sun without a fight? I don’t believe for a second that the people of the fleet were willing to give up their boozalators.

I beg to differ

I played a crappy video game recently. I quite enjoyed it.

Every review I can find about the video game Haze says that it’s awful. Really awful. It was universally panned. Yet when a friend and I recently played it our impression was that it was a fun game and a good time. A lot of reviewers that I respect and normally agree with found the game to be absolutely despicable. This leaves us a bit confounded – why did we have such a giant disconnect with the rest of the gaming industry? I’ve been thinking about that and I have a few theories.

First thing first though. I must share our purchasing experience. We were actively seeking a new co-op game to play. We had criteria to fulfill. The game must support couch-coop (as opposed to on-line coop which seems to be more popular). As we entered the GampStop we knew we had our work cut out for us. There weren’t a lot of new couch coop games for the offering. We narrowed it down to only two possible candidates: America’s Army or Haze. They were the dregs of the gaming barrel, but as desperate men we had little choice. Both games got horrible reviews and had bad reputations. Something led us to decide to go with Haze. As we put the game on the checkout counter the checkout lady winced and groaned. “Are you sure you want to buy that?” We nodded. “I haven’t played it, but I hear it’s horrible. I was here when the game released and many people brought it back the same day. No one likes that game. I don’t want to sell you a bad game.” We acknowledged the bad reviews and the fact that she was giving us sage advice but persisted in the transactions. She made a few more attempts to protect us from ourselves but acquiesced to sell us the stinker. We went home mentally preparing ourselves for the worst. We even watched Dollhouse before playing the game just to fully immerse ourselves in the spirit of mediocrity and meh.

So why don’t the critics like it? Most reviews cite the same litany of complaints. The graphics are subpar, the plot is dumb, and the hero is not likable. I think that is the punch list to criticize any game. Of the three complaints I think the last one has the most credence…but I’ll get to that later on. Let me first address the first two complaints and why I think they’re mitigated for us.

The graphics are subpar: I didn’t really notice this – they weren’t the most amazing graphics ever, but they did not actively detract from the game for me. This might be due to the fact that we played it as a couch coop game or so called “split screen coop.” This means the game had to render two different views on the same screen. I’m no expert, but I think most games have to make tradeoffs and cut out bells and whistles when they are basically rendering two independent game sessions instead of the usual one. Perhaps the single player experience is lack luster compared to other single player experiences…but the slit screen graphics looked pretty much on par with other split screen graphics to me.

On top of that, the split screen coop engine worked well, better in fact than some A-list video games I could name (I’m looking at you Resistance Fall of Man 2). We were able to play the whole campaign as coop. There was a ‘heal your partner’ mechanic were you had a limit amount of time to rescue your downed coop partner. Failing that, it would respawn your partner if you managed to make it to the next checkpoint. The combination added a nice balance of being able to help each other out…but not necessarily have to replay a section if one of use could get successfully through it. That’s a pretty flexible system. There were frequent enough checkpoints that we didn’t get frustrated playing any particular section of the game over and over again.

The plot is dumb: Really? I think the plot is more original than most. The plot of Haze is your working for a private army in South America that is waging a war against guerrilla fighters. It’s the future and the army is pumping you full of a anti-depressant drug that helps numb you to the atrocities of war. Initially you are told you are fighting tyranny and working to prevent ethnic cleansing in the area. Later one you learn that’s not really the case and you’re actually helping repress the locals to further the goals of the private corporation…then you swap sides and join the locals and help fight the man.

Let’s look at the basic plot of the current crop of A-list shooters (that aren’t WWII rehashes)….we’ll take Halo, Gears of War, Resistance Fall of Man, and Killzone. People are fighting off an alien invasion and then….they take the fight to the aliens. You can change up the motivations and origin of the aliens but it’s basically the same thing. These are games that are heralded for their awesome plots.

I think Haze is interesting because it seems to break the unwritten rule of shooters. Basically you’re only allow to enjoy shooting one of two well established enemies (Nazis or terrorist) or aliens (but not plain ol people). There is a taboo about building a murder simulator where you don’t kill bad guys…because after all, you want to feel good about your slaughter. In Haze you start off by killing what you think or terrorist but find out to be just civilians trying to protect their homes..eeek. You’re a bad guy. Then you swap sides and start killing well intentioned soldiers who enlisted out of sense of nationalism and are now being manipulated by drugs towards evil ends. You don’t really get to feel good about killing them either. Shucks. Well then who can I feel good about wholesale slaughtering? Nobody…that’s kind of the point of the game.

The hero is not likable: Unlike most shooters where you are the brave rugged alpha male determined to fight improbable odds, Haze casts you into the role of a college graduate who joined up in an attempt to take an active role in making the world into a better, safer, place only to find out that’s not how its working out. He keeps discovering that he’s responsible for reprehensible actions and poor decisions. Basically he’s a wishy-washy unintentional screw-up. I thought it was a refreshing change of pace for a protagonist…but I can see how people might react poorly to this forced casting (after all they’re probably fulltime screws-up as their day job…zing!) The game doesn’t let you feel good about your killing. It will let you savor the accomplishment of getting out of a tough spot then shows you that you’re not killing people who are intrinsically evil. Bummer. Supposedly they toned this aspect of the game back! Originally it was so strong that they were afraid that the game was too preachy about the nature of war. Go figure. I think some critics who got an early look at that version were ultimately disappointed that the game got mellowed. I think it retained enough of an edge to not allow you to feel like you’re in some adolescent male’s fantasy. Which is probably not a selling point for this sort of game. I will say I find it unpalatable that your character learns about the dangers of blindly following orders and responds by immediately finding a new person to blindly follow orders from…but that is hardly unique to this game (I’m looking at you GTA4).

Why did it work for me and not some many others? Perhaps I wasn’t burdened by expectations. The game had very favorable press prior to release. People were expecting a lot out of it. On the other hand, thanks to our helpful GameStop salesperson, my expectations were set exceedingly low. Or perhaps it’s simply the magic of couch coop. It’s no secret to me that having real live friends, like in the same room, can take a boring and repetitive single player experience and turn it into a memorable and enjoyable evening.

Overall I found the game to be successful. The only thing that could have made it better for me is if you discovered that the company you were working for was a banana company and you were working to oppress fruit laborers. There is a historical precedent!

I enjoyed the experience, laughed out loud, and walked away with something to think about. What more can you ask from entertainment?