What a Tease

Another new writer joins False Travels! MarvelBoy will be filling us in on...well, whatever he damn well pleases. We haven't really hammered out any niche topics for him, so he'll be a jack-of-all-trades who, like all our writers, pops in and out when he has something to say. You can follow him on Twitter.

Not too long ago a study made the usual rounds on the internet that asked the eternal question. It claimed that when men were forced to choose between going phoneless for a year or spending the same period of time without sex they chose the phone fifty percent of the time. It was an amusing article and was obviously intended to prompt a similar internal debate in the reader. Being unable to resist a hypothetical question, my immediate response was: "sex, you foolish, foolish researcher ." Call me a traditionalist, but I simply could not see the other side of the argument.

It wasn't long, though, before I was forced to completely rethink my pro-copulating opinion and it was all because of this: www.droiddoes.com. I had been in the market for a phone and this enchanting device seems to have everything I could dream of: an iPhone 3GS level processor, Android (a must), a physical keyboard, and to top it all off, an incredibly quirky viral marketing campaign!

Really, it's only a matter of time until I get this phone, and when I do you can expect a full review.

False Travels on Google Wave

Through an unlikely series of events, I've come across a Google Wave invite (if my Wave benefactor is reading this, thanks again). If you're in need of some folks to wave at, feel free to throw me up on your contacts list using the email address in the site footer. I plan to start a False Travels wave at some point, but I want to get a little more familiar with the platform before I do that...I'm still figuring out just how to navigate and provide content on this platform. Keep your eyes on this post for a link (or maybe even an embedded Wave) in the not too distant future.

[Update] It bears mentioning that my invite didn't come loaded with any invites to offer to friends or begging strangers. If you're looking for a Google Wave invite, the best thing you can do if you haven't already, is sign up here, and hope for the best. And keep your eyes to Twitter...unexpected things can happen there (not all of them are pleasant; be smart).

The Engadget Show: So Much for Live Blogging

Remember yesterday, when I said that getting to the Engadget Show could be an adventure? Yeah...I was more than a little right. Hit the jump to see how it all went down.

Live Blogging the Engadget Show (maybe)

So, I'm hoping that the stars align tomorrow and I can get from work to home, from home to the train station, into the city, and over to the Times Center, all in time to get a seat for the Engadget Show!

Keep an eye on my Twitter stream to see if all of that works out without a hitch (or at least without a dealbreaking hitch). If it does, I'll be trying my hand at live blogging the Engadget Show. So follow me and see my exploits as I try to make it there in time...it could be an adventure!

Nearly a Year Now: Fallout 3

We are quickly coming up on the anniversary of Fallout 3's release, and even after twelve months I still find myself as excited as a little kid dying to get home and get back to the Wasteland. After a year, and well over 100 hours of gameplay on one (one!) playthrough I still can't put the game down. Its awful to think about all the new games I’ve neglected (Halo 3: ODST, Red Faction, inFamous), all because I just can't stop playing Fallout.

But enough gushing! Why is it, that of all the games I've played in two decades as a gamer, why is Fallout 3 so hard to let go of?

For me, it’s the diversity and the realism. Many games have claimed to be open-ended, have advertised diverse gameplay, and some of them deliver on these promises…to a certain extent. None of them quite stand up to Fallout though. Not even its big brother Oblivion has quite the same level of choices. Diverse gameplay and innovative concepts are often stuffed down your throat from the get go, especially in this generation of games; Bethesda has thankfully never done that. The point I'm trying to make is that even after all this time, I'm still finding new things to do, still figuring out the ways in which my actions affect the virtual world around me.

The realism is the other element that keeps me coming back; the game is not a narrative, its an experience. By that, I mean that 99% of the game is optional, and only about 60% is doable (by my calculations at least), because every choice has different paths, whether you notice them or not. The game has such a natural flow, that you never feel like your choosing between story or sidequest, a good choice or an evil one. You simply go, and as you do your choices shape the adventure and determine, in many cases, which parts make up the story and which parts don’t.

The most important part for me now though is the emotional bond I've formed with the game. After so much time devoted to a single run through, I actually care what happens to my traveling companions Fawkes the super mutant, and Dogmeat, the German Shepherd. I consider that connection in and of itself a grand achievement for the development team.