Random Notes

The gamers screaming at Sony over the design of the PSP Go make a few valid points. Yes, it's more expensive than the original models when it should be cheaper without the UMD drive. Yes, it locks you into the more expensive retail prices on the PSN store when you could buy used UMDs for half the price. You are indeed boned if you want to sell off your games after you've beaten them. The screen is smaller.

Still, their apoplexy is undermined by reality: Sony isn't putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to sell their UMDs and "upgrade" to a PSP Go. If they don't want one, they don't have to buy one.

I got mine Sunday morning. Since I couldn't be home for Christmas, Mom decided to wait until I could come home before we opened gifts and ate the enormous dinner. The kids had opened their stuff at April's on Christmas morning; between the two houses, they made out like bandits.

First impression of the PSP Go? Holy God, that sucker is tiny! I've seen plenty of video showing it in action, but that didn't prepare me for actually holding it in my hand. It feels incredibly light after hauling around my PSP-1000 behemoth for years.

I loaded it with games and videos and spent the day having little nerdgasms all over the house. I carried it everywhere. Mom asked me several times if I was happy with it and I had to reassure her I was thrilled. "Trust me," I said, "the odds of my leaving the apartment without it in my pocket are somewhere between slim and none."

I also received a set of towels, a new bedspread, some badly-needed pens, and a stocking with plenty of gum and goodies. Uncle Tom rode up to give me a big tin of popcorn; the cheese compartment was empty before the day was out.

April received something she'd been wanting awhile: a GPS system. Her only complaint was the voice sounded a bit snooty. The company sells other voices, and she was seriously tempted to download David Hasselhoff. I think that's awesome, especially if his directions are slurred and it sounds like he's eating a cheeseburger.

This is why children should not be unsupervised on the Internet. I walked into Mom and Dad's computer room to check my e-mail and found this on the screen:



I smell a lecture coming on. "You want to look like Fall Out Boy and flash your junk all over the Internet like Pete Wentz? You think Tokio Hotel is so cool? When you're older and have a job, you can have all the My Chemical Romance you want, but while you're under this roof..."

Relax, I'm kidding. Still, I've gotta wonder which kid was dressing up the emo.

(No actual harshness toward Pete Wentz should be inferred. I quite liked his pic.)

In

Death Troopers combines zombies and Star Wars. What could go wrong?

the middle of my current exploration of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the novel Death Troopers was brought to my attention. Brett mentioned it to Michael who mentioned it to me. It's the potential chocolate-and-peanut-butter literary mix that takes two great tastes and hopes like hell they taste great together.

Star Wars and zombies.

It's not that I expect it to be done well, but I'm just amused to see it attempted. There's no way I could avoid it or tell myself it's gotta be crap. I had to check it out. I've been listening to the audiobook and it's not bad.

The story is set on one of the Empire's prison barges. They encounter a drifting Star Destroyer where everyone aboard has been wiped out by a disease. Naturally it spreads to the prison ship and everyone starts dying. And then they start coming back to life. You think the idea of a zombie stormtrooper is scary? Zombie wookies are worse.

The reader, Sean Kenin, does a great job. He juggles a lot of distinct voices for the characters. I hope he's making a handsome living doing voice work for cartoons when he's not reading books.

The only complaint I have about the audiobook is the overdesigned chapter intros. It's a burst of static, then Kenin reading the chapter title, and then a distorted undervoice screaming the title at a much lower volume. It's supposed to sound manic and scary but really only manages to sound goofy. It's a minor quibble.

Less than two months since Mokey was released from her cage by Mom's cat, Mokey II has escaped. This time there was no feline aid involved. I walked into the living room this morning and the door to her cage was hanging open. She'd managed to pop it and drop to the floor.

I

Saw: Mouse Hunt remix.

don't know where she is, but I've seen the damage she's caused. She gnawed off some of the rubber coating on a PS3 analog stick, the volume control of my television remote, and snacked on two of the cable box remote buttons.

While April and the kids were here, Andy put his finger up to the cage and got a bite for his troubles. I joked that, since the hamster had tasted human flesh, I'd have to sleep with one eye open. I didn't realize that might be accurate.

I'd like to think I'll catch the little beast, but I doubt it. More likely she'll stumble into one of the mousetraps and solve the problem. I'd rather have her dead than damaging my stuff. I know that sounds cold, but destryoing electronics downgrades her to "Disposable Creature." I'll go Mouse Hunt on her if I have to.

Maybe I should give up on pet ownership and go back to Nintendogs. It hasn't been a good year for animals in my orbit. Maybe I'll try again in a few years.

Update: Mouse trap 1, Mokey 0. I feel more guilt about that than I thought I would, but I don't think it was likely to end any other way.

My sister recommended these blogs: Checking the Electrical Box and Why Is Daddy Crying?. They're good and funny and worth a look.

Checking the Electrical Box:
My 5 year old daughter is a Jr. Gynecologist. She loves her vagina and at her age, what's not to love? It's cooler than her arm and her brother doesn't have one. I've encouraged this burgeoning relationship not because I'm all "Our Bodies Ourselves" but because I'm the Ghost of Vagina Future. I view my vagina like a Gremlin. It's cute and fuzzy but requires a lot of maintenance and must never be fed after midnight. Sadly, when gotten wet it doesn't multiply. I hear some can though.

Why Is Daddy Crying?
My brother lovingly and occasionally refers to his children as "fuck-trophies."

Now, he only does it in front of the right audience, and never in front of the kids--just making sure that's out there so no angry parent-mobs form and go after him. But the first time I heard it, I laughed like hell while jotting it down on a little pad so I could whip the phrase out later as if I'd sat in my thinking chair late one night, sporting my pimped-out smoking jacket, pondering new and hilarious things.

But then later it hit me. My children really should be clad in gold, thrown on a pedestal, forever frozen in some award-winning pose as tribute to the wifey and me getting it on. Why? Because they truly are representative of a time when the wifey and I rocked the house of its foundation.

This morning was quiet. Laura had been promised first gaming dibs, but she was asleep when Andy started lobbying for a turn. April said he could play on the grounds that he had to hand the controller to Laura as soon as she woke up. I think he managed to slaughter zombies for three minutes before her eyes snapped open.

The kids stuffed themselves full of Crunchberries and goofed around on assorted games until April started herding them toward packing up their stuff. They may not have brought a lot of clothes, but they had plenty of entertainment.

Joey's little suitcase cracked me up the most. I think there was a single shirt in it, but he had several blocks of wood. I'm not talking about cute little cubes with colored letters on the side; I'm talking about sawed-off lengths you could use to board up the house if the zombies tried to get in. When I questioned it, the kids explained that he used them for his train set so he could elevate the tracks and not be stuck with a flat circle on the floor.

They left shortly after noon, loading up the van and fleeing back to the house at Drawdy. Mom and Dad are still without electricity, so they may end up spending the night at April's. The family refugee wheel keeps on a'turnin'.

I'll see them again Sunday when I go home for a delayed Christmas.

In other news, the smokin' hot UPS delivery guy turned up at my door again, this time sans supervisor. If the sister and family hadn't been there... well, I still wouldn't have propositioned the guy, but my fantasies would've been a hell of a lot dirtier.

The

Laura reads The Zombie Survival Guide.

kids are always hounding me to play Dead Rising because they love violent anti-zombie action. I like the game, but the structure frustrates me enough that I haven't bothered playing it much since I beat it. I finally realized the best course of action -- one that would probably have child psychologists screaming for my scalp -- was to just turn them loose and let them play it.

They don't get very far, but that's okay because they just enjoy whacking the zombies in the first area. Andy would pick up potted plants and slam them down on the zombies' heads. Emma was partial to the baseball bat, although April and I had to keep telling her to stop hitting the characters who were still alive.

While they played that, Laura discovered my copy of The Zombie Survival Guide and started reading it. I was so proud. She thinks Night of the Living Dead is boring as hell -- she's nine, so what does she know? -- but she likes zombies in general.

April went shopping again, this time to buy a change of clothes and spaghetti supplies. I had the ingredients, but I wasn't sure I had enough to feed six people. It turned out I did, but I added the meatballs she'd picked up.

She also bought a few things for my apartment as an early Christmas present. "Now that I see how you live," she said, "I have a better idea of what you need." The fact that I rarely dust was really grating on her every time she stepped into the bathroom, so she came back with a good broom and a dustpan. She also had two new pillows and some spoons to replace my escapees.

"You

Joey plays Pain on the PS3.

know this bathmat is dry-rotted on the bottom?" she yelled as I was making dinner. I went in there to check it out. Yep. Lots of yellow dust under the mat.

"That explains why it's been feeling so strange for the past week or so," I laughed. "More crunchy than springy."

I popped in another movie for the kids to watch while we ate. They played a few more games while I finished reading Heir to the Empire and started Dark Force Rising. Laura wanted to play Animal Crossing, so I let her make a character in my long-neglected town of Tonberry. I was surprised there were still animals living there.

Laura and Andy got into a fight and lost their gaming privileges, and then Laura got into an argument with April about the fairness of their punishment. It morphed into an argument about whether Laura was actually arguing and almost turned into a Monty Python sketch in the process.

They eventually conked out watching Aliens in the Attic. April, meanwhile, was thrilled to learn her power and Internet were back in working order when a neighbor started posting on Facebook. They're heading back to Drawdy tomorrow.

The

The kids play Mario Kart 64.

snow knocked out my sister's electricity, so she loaded up the kids and took them to a hotel Saturday night. Since the power was still out today, she brought the kids to Parkersburg to spend the night at my apartment.

I ran the vacuum around the living room, washed the dishes, and moved some stuff to less accessible places. I started looking around and feeling like an inadequate host in advance, since it's a small apartment. Thoughts of the children running wild and burning the building to the ground also crossed my mind; I love 'em, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of turning into minor hellbeasts at times. I could imagine the stress of keeping a constant watch getting to me until I snapped and started babbling about horrors crawling out of the earth to devour the living.

The kids were fine, I'm happy to say. I have a lot of video games, so it wasn't hard to keep them busy. They started with Mario Kart 64 and hit some of their favorites. Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman were major players, as was Animal Crossing.

The magnetic letters on my fridge proved popular, once they got around to asking if they could play with them. I didn't have crayons or markers or pencils for them, so magnets were their friend when it came to making comments about who had the biggest butt or the smelliest farts.

Of course, that's just to entertain the children. The trick was entertaining April. Her laptop couldn't connect to my WiFi, and that was disturbing because she really would burn the place to the ground if she couldn't get Twitter and Facebook time. She called one of her techie buddies to talk her through the changes she needed to make to my router settings to allow it. Crisis averted.

I

Andy and Emma arrange magnetic letters on my fridge.

kept an eye on the kids while she went shopping for chili supplies. She called at one point to say I should speak in code so the kids didn't hear, but she was getting some Ben & Jerry's ice cream for after they went to sleep and was there anything I wanted. Peanut Butter Cup, of course.

We have very different recipes when it comes to chili. I like mine almost hot enough to make you sweat, while her chili is mild and somewhat sweet from brown sugar. She was cooking, so it was her style. I didn't complain and ate two bowls while the kids watched episodes of The Simpsons.

We finished out by watching G-Force, since having the kids around meant I finally had an excuse to watch it. The movie is not great, but it's not wretched. The kids certainly liked it. Steve Buscemi doing the voice of a crazy hamster was a definite bonus.

April got an AEP rep on the phone to check on her power. Worst-case scenario, her power would be out until Christmas.

Okay, two more PSP wallpapers. One for Christmas and one just because:

Santa Baby:


Spider-Man 2099:

Labels: psp wallpaper

The

We didn't get hit hard.

epic snowstorm which blanketed much of the state didn't hit Parkersburg very hard in comparison. The Weather Channel was making it sound like Snow-mageddon 2009 as I was getting ready for work yesterday.

We had an early deadline last night so we could get the newspaper out to the carriers in advance, but it didn't amount to anything. When I left, it was sprinkling a little rain. I woke this morning to see the ground was covered, but it was barely an inch or two deep.

Dad called this morning to see how much we got. While I'm sitting here disappointed by the lack of show, they got 12-14 inches and lost their electricity. He said he tried to go to work last night but made it as far as the community center before he said to hell with it and turned around to call in absent. It was just as well, because so many trees were down in Prenter that nobody could get in or out.

Because I'm bored, and because I make a lot of wallpapers for my PSP, I thought I'd share a few. A lot of them are straightforward crops to fit the screen's 480x272 dimensions and not be obscured by the interface. Others are a little more behind-the-scenes elaborate.

Babylon 5:

Calvin and Hobbes come to a bad end:

Death, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman:

Gir, from Invader Zim:

Godzilla:

Metroid Zero Mission:

Sly Cooper:

Superboy and Robin, from an image by Aaronica:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

The Walking Dead:

Soccer hottie Cristiano Ronaldo:

Random hottie:

Another random hottie:

Taylor Lautner:

David Kawena's Aladdin:

David Kawena's Pheobus:

David Kawena's Tarzan:

Labels: psp wallpaper

Director and geek icon Dan O'Bannon died. He wrote the screenplay for Alien, created the zombie-heavy "B-17" segment for Heavy Metal, and directed my beloved Return of the Living Dead (the good one, not all the sucky crap that followed).

I'm not a music guy. My iPod is loaded with songs I like, but it's not part of the culture that drives me. My interest in songs is more like that of a bird spotting something shiny; I line the mental nest without insight as to how any of it got there.

I pick up layers of appreciation through friendship. Nugent taught me opera and musicals -- the latter of which was cemented by Gravely in college -- and McKenna slathered on layers of rock and punk, and got me to watch enough rock docs to give me a slight working knowledge of modern music history.

Nobody has managed to make me like country, for which I'm grateful.

Rolling Stone compiled a list of the top fifty albums of the decade. I'm completely shocked, SHOCKED!, to learn I only have one of them on the iPod: Green Day's American Idiot. I have three of their best songs: Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out"; Britney Spears' "Toxic"; and Green Day's "American Idiot."

I only have a subscription to Rolling Stone because Amazon gave it to me for $1.

Sony launched a digital comics reader for the PSP a few weeks back. I downloaded a free copy of some Transformers comic and was almost immediately turned off by the Auto Flow feature that pans and zooms across the page, moving from frame to frame. I could actually feel my soul recoiling in horror because there didn't seem to be much time to really admire the art.

Now that they've officially launched their comics store, I decided to give it another try. I felt better after realizing the analog nub could be used to scroll across the pages so you can examine the art at leisure instead of being locked into Auto Flow. The PSP screen is very crisp and has great resolution, so the art looks great.

The selection is pretty thin so far, but I had a little nerdgasm when I found G.I. Joe #2: "Panic at the North Pole." The story of the Joes' first encounter with Quinn the Eskimo has always been one of my favorite comics, so I paid my 99 cents for a digital copy.

I really need to buy this game...

I just woke up from a dream in which I was on vacation with Dad and April. We stopped at a bizarre video rental store which was also a diner. The entire thing had a dungeon motif. When we walked in, Harry Knowles from Ain't It Cool News was scribbling away on a legal pad in the corner. I realized via dream logic that it was some place he's always talking about in his columns.

Then I couldn't order any food because I couldn't read the signs over the counter and the menu was gibberish, so I just nodded when Dad suggested the Blooming Onion.

While we were in line, some little kid started mouthing off so I punched the smartass. He fell bleeding to the floor and I growled "Stay down, bitch" as Knowles gathered up his belongings and left the store.

I don't usually follow the trending topics on Twitter, but I noticed the death of religious huckster Oral Roberts was up there. There were plenty of "R.I.P." statements, but there was also some inspired smartassery. Here are some of my favorites:

CyrilJones: Best headline I've seen about Oral Roberts: "Jesus prepares to receive Oral"

warrenellis: Apparently Oral Roberts is dead, but no reports yet of his being staked, beheaded and garlic being shoved in the stump

questlove: Oral Roberts woulda been an ill porno name.

RandyTayler: If I can't raise $8 million, God is going to send Oral Roberts back to us.

CheddarChad: Why is Oral Roberts trending? Did they upset a big team or something?

chasia: I heard Oral Roberts embraced evolution on his deathbed.

shizane i see oral roberts died today. who names their kid "oral" in the first place? "well son, you were supposed to have been swallowed.."

badambassador: 2009, you won't quit taking our best and brightest. oral roberts: thank you for the amazing toothbrushes and god speed.

joehartzler: "Who?" -Jesus on the death of Oral Roberts.

Sherry

Some old-school dungeon crawl in this game.

surprised me with an Amazon gift card for Christmas. It took me 0.02 seconds to decide what to spend it on. I've been wanting to buy the downloadable version of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. The story deals with a bunch of high school students who are thrown into the middle of a demonic invasion of Tokyo.

It's a remake of a PS1 game. When it was originally brought to the U.S., they stripped out a lengthy side-quest and tried to hide the fact that it was set in Japan. Bleh. This version has a much better localization.

It's an old-school dungeon-crawl. You wander around "dungeons" -- office buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. -- in a first-person view and fight demons on an isometric grid.

I have a feeling it'll keep me busy a long time. I've played an hour or so already, but I'm not going to dive all the way in until I've finished Dragon Age.

The recent Clone Wars marathons, coupled with Michael Erb's recent discussion of R.A. Salvatore's "New Jedi Order" books, made me nostalgic for Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy. I haven't read them since they were first published nearely 18 years ago. I thought I owned copies, but I searched my shelves and found nothing. If I ever had them, I must've gotten rid of them during one of my periodic book purges.

You can find used copies for a penny on Amazon, but I decided to walk down to Trans Allegheny Books first. The paperbacks are downstairs, with the back wall devoted entirely to science fiction. They keep all the Star Wars and Star Trek tie-ins together on the far right.

Lucky me, they had one copy of each book in the trilogy. Far more impressive was their condition: they were first printings of the paperback editions, and other than a small amount of yellowing on the inside covers, they were pristine. I don't know if they've ever been read. The entire set was about $10. I covered the cases in plastic when I got them back to my apartment, so they'll probably still look that good in another 18 years.

I was amused and startled to discover I own the Salvatore books Erb had told me about. The hardcovers have been sitting on the fireplace mantle for ages. I can't remember where I got them -- Hopkins would be my best guess -- and I must've put them there to wait for a donation to the annual book sale. I might actually have to read them at some point.

I get a nerd boner at the idea of jumping into the e-book waters and buying a Kindle or Nook, but part of me recognizes that would largely destroy the fun of puttering around in a used book store full of cats.

Actor Gene Barry died. I was unfamiliar with the man's body of work, but he's always had a special place in my heart because he was the star of the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds. It's one of my favorite movies.

I remember the first time I saw it, too. This was back in early childhood, during the early days of VHS movie rentals; you you could still find Betamax on the shelves. We had an ancient top-loading VCR whose remote control wasn't even wireless. Mom and Dad had rented Airplane! and The War of the Worlds for us. I remember April and I were camped out in the living room and woke up at some point in the middle of the night and started watching them.

Good times.

I was happy to see Barry get a cameo in Spielberg's remake with his co-star. The ending may not be great, but at least he made a nice nod to a classic.

It also doesn't hurt that his character in War of the Worlds was Dr. Clayton Forrester, which became the name of the mad scientist in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Walking through the mall the other day, I mostly ignored the big calendar stand in the center. I usually take a second to register whatever tastefully-photographed black-and-white cowboy beefcake might be on display, but I never actually buy any of them.

I think I should probably pick one up. I still haven't memorized any of the children's birthdays and they catch me by surprise every single time since the PDA died a horrible shrieking death. Andy is turning eight tomorrow and I was completely unaware.

Thanks to the power of the Internet, I can send him a downloadable Wii game. He'll only have about 24 hours to play it before April ships it off to repair the disc drive, but it's better than nothing.

I need to do a better job on that sort of thing. I didn't mind it so much when they were uber-young and probably not paying attention. I'd like to think I do a halfway decent job at being an uncle, but that's an area that clearly needs improvement.

Since I haven't posted enough videos lately (/sarcasm), here's one that made me smile and impressed me more when I got to the end and found out it was split-screen and not actual twins. Oops.

Twenty hours into Dragon Age Origins, and I finally have elven boytoy Zevran on my team. His initial assassination attempt was frustrating as hell, as he and his ambushing thugs killed my crew eight or night times before I bypassed all of them and went charging at the mage. With that bastard out of the way, it was easier to subdue the elf and allow him to travel with me.

Now for the fun part: seducing him into some male-male action. He looks like Legolas and purrs like Antonio Banderas, so it's gotta be done. I haven't found a dialogue option for "I'm a hot elf dude and you're a hot elf dude, so let's slip off and have a good old-fashioned Mirkwood slamfuck," but I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

The strategy guides make him sound like a very easy lay.

K and I bought copies of the first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars during our trip to the mall. Say what you want about the prequel trilogy, at least they gave us a strong backdrop for a cool animated series. We watched the three-part "Rising Malevolence" story, which I'd never seen. It was good.

The series captures the feel of the Star Wars movies, but I have an easier time suspending my disbelief when it's animated; if the characters are stiff you can blame it on stylistic choices in the animation instead of George Lucas not being able to direct humans in a convincing manner.

Kristofer brought over Grand Theft Auto IV: Tales from Liberty City. He finished his playthrough of "The Lost and Damned," which is a storyline I understood and enjoyed a lot more than I probably would've if I'd never seen Sons of Anarchy.

The other story is "The Ballad of Gay Tony," and I'll probably have to buy my own copy now. The main character, Luis Lopez, is the business partner (and professional muscle) for nightclub owner Tony Prince, AKA "Gay Tony." Tony owes a lot of money, he's addicted to assorted drugs, and he's past his prime. At one point he bitches that he's stuck doing coke with starlets who're more famous for having their privates flashed in the tabloids than for any actual talent.

I like the relationship between Luis and Tony. As K points out, it's probably the healthiest relationship in the entire series. They watch out for each other, and Luis is certainly no fan of the negative atmosphere of partyboy crap put out by Tony's latest boytoy.

Considering the high levels of homophobia expressed by the average Xbox Live user, there's something wonderfully subversive and fun about the idea of Rockstar making a gay guy one of the respected main characters for their biggest franchise.

Heh. Playing Dragon Age Origins, I now have an intelligent dog recruited into my party. They gave me the option of naming him, so I picked "Legolas." I've always wanted to make him my bitch, ha-ha.

Skillful use of Animal to cover up the less kid-friendly lyrics.

Amanda Marcotte states this so perfectly I have to salute:

The conundrum of sex has always been that it's both exquisitely pleasurable (if done with enthusiastic consent, of course), but also pretty gross. Like eating barbecue, but involving nudity, and therefore kind of embarrassing. The solution to this conundrum in our male-dominated society is to put all the nastiness of sex on women, and present to women a bizarre catch-22: you must simultaneously be sexually available but not sexual at all, because that's gross.

There's a reason I haven't eaten barbecue in public since the summer of 1998. She makes the correct point about misogyny, too... but I like dudes so I don't have to worry.

During

Milk and an Eisenhower jacket.

the weekend's Middleman marathon, I kept having the nagging feeling I'd seen actor Matt Keeslar somewhere before. I couldn't place him. I finally got around to doing an IMDb search and found out that goofy straight-edger with a glass of milk, an Eisenhower jacket and an aw-shucks grin was the same guy who'd sent all my dials into the red playing Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in the Dune miniseries several years back. He was always fighting shirtless and had a bathing scene that showed off a very nice butt.

That was a definite surprise.

In fact, the last episode of The Middleman was also a surprise, because it involved a Mirror Universe storyline where he was a one-eyed Snake Plissken knockoff. I didn't even recognize him with his shirt off because I didn't expect so many muscles.
Keeslar gets a bath in Dune.

I

My elf mage, Meloren.

started playing Dragon Age Origins, and I think I made the right decision in buying it. The game is supposed to last 60-70 hours, and the few I've played today were quick to convince me they'll be very good hours.

I had enough time to play through the mage origin story. At one point I had to go into a basement and clear out giant spiders. It gave me flashbacks to the rat-slaying opening stage of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, so that was okay.

Because I'm a total perv, my character and his eventual allies spent most of their time running around in their underwear. This also had the practical effect of leaving me with a ton of armor and weapons to sale when they left my party, but mostly it was because watching half-naked dudes doesn't get old.

When my copy of Dragon Age Origins arrived, I was able to play for about twenty minutes before I had to get ready for work. Twenty minutes is just enough time to tweak character settings to design a cute elf I'd want to sleep with -- I follow the Clive Barker rule of protagonist design -- and watch the opening cutscene for the mage storyline. As soon as the game handed over control, I saved and turned off the Xbox.