Zune Pass 9-30-09

The Zune Pass is one of the greatest things I have encountered in the nineteen years of my life. While some may argue the financial value or the overall values of a subscription model, the Zune Pass is a well thought-out and useful product, as long as you aren't tied to another device through DRM'ed purchases or buy having non-Windows computer.

For $15 a month, the subscriber gets access to what I believe is the entirety of the Zune Marketplace. For a very long time I did not perceive the value with it because I would only download a handful of songs every once and a while. However, they changed the plan so that each month you can pick 10 songs that you want to keep, even if you end your subscription. They made it easy to perceive it as being only $5 a month, keeping in mind that the average song is $.99. It worked.

Like I mentioned in the Zune software entry, the software has a lot of hooks that make having the Zune Pass a good idea and add convenience to the software. For instance, if you have the Zune Pass, if you want to preview a song, you get to hear the whole song versus a 30-second clip. The SmartDJ will allow you to let it create playlists from just Zune Marketplace songs or a mix of what's on your computer and Zune Marketplace songs.

The interesting thing about the Zune Pass and the biggest issue with Microsoft's advertisement for it is that you really only perceive the value of it once you try it. It may be worth their time to let customers try it for a month and even give customers the free 10 songs. They could attach the trials to the the Zune Tag which would be required to be attached to a credit card so they would not have to worry about abuse.

Ok, that was sort of cheesy, but you get what it’s about,ight? Last week, on September 15th, Microsoft released the newest version of the Zune PC software, 4.0. In short, it’s attractive and very, very functional.

The first thing you see when the program starts is a wholly new feature called Quickplay. Mimicking the interface of the Zune HD (the latest and greatest in the Zune brand of MP3 players), it functions very intuitively, but it breaks the design scheme of the software. It works as though the program is a touch-screen and your mouse is your finger. You move the mouse across the screen to move the focus in the line, and you can click on the SmartDJ mixes to make that overtake the Welcome section as what your “finger” affects. However, the rest of the Zune software does not even have the option of the black background/white text scheme. It breaks the aesthetic flow of the program, but it does help differentiate the navigation of the program between the “touchscreen” Quickplay and the traditional interface of the rest of Zune.

Other than the Quickplay section, Zune keeps a very good design scheme for across the program. The main "tabs” are smaller than the more important content tabs, but are still easily red. It sticks to the “Organize your music, not a spreadsheet” mantra, where it really looks nothing like its main competitor, iTunes.

Another function of the Zune software is to sell subscriptions to the Zune Pass, the $15 a month subscription service where you can download all of the songs available on the Zune marketplace and choose 10 each month you want to keep forever. The Zune software has many features that are either augmented by the Zune Pass or out-and-out require it.

One new feature is the SmartDJ. Zune’s alternative to the iTunes Genius playlist, SmartDJ playlists take a band or song that you want a playlist based around and make a list of 100 songs. If you don’t have a Zune Pass, it can only make a playlist from songs on your computer’s hard drive. The problem with that is the way the SmartDJ creates the list seems to have some flaws when it does not have 5 million songs to pick from. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I want a playlist for Weezer, I don’t think Nirvana fits in too well. Throw in the Zune Pass, and it completely changes, getting a list as varied and accurate as anything you can get from the Genius playlist.

Overall, the Zune software is well-designed, being both beautiful and useful. It probably won’t convert a Mac-only or iPod-only user, but it makes me really hope that the rumors of it replacing Windows Media Player as Windows’ preinstalled media software are true.

Who do you think I am? I'm the Batman. 9-2-09

As many of you will likely find out throughout the semester, I am an avid video gamer. I also used to be a HUGE Batman fan when I was younger. The cartoon, the movies (yeah, even the Schumacher ones), and the toys. With The Dark Knight piquing my interest in Batman again, I was pleasantly surprised to hear about a new Batman video game coming out, Batman: Arkham Asylum. I was even more surprised when all I heard from my favorite gaming sites that game was not just good, but great, an extreme rarity for Batman games and licensed games in general.

Even with all of the pre-release praise, I was still skeptical, so I rented it. I got it on the 26th of August, and I beat it on the 31st. It is one of the best, if not the best, game I've played this year so far. As a rule of thumb, I have never enjoyed sections of games that required me to be stealthy. In Arkham Asylum, not only did I enjoy the stealth, I looked forward to it. In fact, Arkham let me know why I disliked other games' stealth. In every other game, when you hide in the shadows, you hide because you are at a disadvantage. Either you're weaker or out-numbered or if you get noticed you could start World War 3. In Arkham Asylum, you hide because you are stronger than your enemies when you have the element of surprise. The game only requires stealth of you in sections where the enemies have guns. Batman does not have bullet-proof armor, and if the enemies spot you, they will turn you into pulp quite quickly. So you sit on the gargoyles positioned in every stealth-needed room, and wait until one person gets separated from the rest, and you take him out.

The other thing that makes the game great is the pacing. Outside of the unnecessarily long intro, the game keeps you going at a good clip. Rocksteady, the developers, did a great job in showing you sections that you couldn't reach at the time and then quickly providing you with the tools to reach them. However, the sections that the game showed were never areas that you would have to go backward to, but areas that you wold see again through the natural course of the game. When you start in Arkham Asylum, you have Batarangs and the grappling hook. By the time you finish the game you have the ability to throw three Batarangs at once, an explosive gel with detonator, a remote electronic-lock-breaker, a zipline launcher, and a type of grappling claw that lets you pull down walls. You acquire these all over the course of an approximately eight to ten hour game, so you as the player do not play for too long a section of time without getting a new toy to play with.

Now, the game is not perfect. Like I mentioned earlier, there are gargoyles, to grapple up to and hide on, in every room that you need to be stealthy in. These aren't outdoor arenas. These are indoor rooms, like warehouses or botanical gardens. It really broke my suspension of disbelief. There were some obvious objects that would have fit a bit better, such as ledges or piping or just about anything that one would find in a room.



Aesthetically, the game is quite beautiful. However, there seems to be a sort of trademark visual design to the characters in games made in the engine, which is that they are very thick and muscular looking. The only character that does not match that style is the Joker, but even Comisioner Gordon looked like he could bench 300 pounds. If the Joker was not naturally proportioned, I would have assumed that Unreal Engine 3 can only render super-muscular people, but what would appear to be their decision to make Joker look scrawny made everyone else look ridiculous. Having some restraint in the sizing of every character that wasn't the Joker would have helped give a more realistic visual style.