Remembrance Day (or Veteran's Day, as it is called in the United States) has always been a big deal for me. When I wrote my general purpose/political blog I took special care to try to learn a bit about the men and women who have fought for my country in the past (and who actively do so today) and share it with my readership. Although I consider this journey of learning and remembering to be a year round affair, it always seems more poignant and immediate as November 11th approaches.

This year I'll be at work at 11:00 when the Remembrance ceremony is taking place on Parliament Hill here in Ottawa. Although I have attended in the past, it's simply not possible to do so this year; work is too busy, and I just finished chewing up a week of holidays. I'll miss watching the veterans march proudly through the streets; I'll miss applauding them as they brave the chilly Canadian autumn weather to parade another time for us all; I'll miss the mix of emotions - from pride, to grief, to wistful reminiscence, to relief, to peace - that adorn those honoured faces.

Perhaps - although it will be a poor substitute - I'll attend the moment of silence that is being organized on Dungeons and Dragons Online's Thelanis server by Bekki. While I suspect that it will be difficult to convince the server population to participate en masse, it is still a nice touch and worth supporting, in my opinion.

As a final note, I would like to share a pair of letters from my great grandfather, Norman Peterkin, who fought in both the First and Second World War. I transcribed both of these letters after they were given to my mother by my grandmother, and they paint a picture of a brave man ready to sacrifice absolutely everything to defend his country.

The first was written to my great grandmother back when they were only dating. Norman was barely old enough to enlist, but felt duty calling:

Montreal, Que
Nov. 23rd 1915

My Dear Fairfax:

Your letter [to hand] to-day and I need not tell you how pleased I was to hear from you.

I had late leave of absence to-night to attend a party at the home of one of my Comrades in arms. It is now twelve-thirty. I left the party early in order that I might write to you.

Perhaps what I am going to say will be a surprise to you - perhaps it will not, but you surely have known for quite a while that I think a great deal of [....ripped page....] so when your letter came to [....ripped page....] in it that you did not like to think of the time when my Regiment sails, I made up my mind that I would be just as frank with you. I am very sorry in more ways than one that I feel it my duty to go, and one reason that makes me feel that way is that it is quite possible that I may never return to see the one girl that I love, namely yourself.

So when your letter came to-day I thought perhaps you might reciprocate my feelings. I want to ask you if you will be my wife, provided I come back from the war and am not crippled in any way. I would not ask any woman to marry a cripple, so I put it that way. If I come...

[....half page (or perhaps a full page) is missing.....]

...their young brother leaving when I leave. Five other chums are dead "somewhere in France", blood calls Fairfax and I must answer that call. Can you blame me?

Now be sure and send me your ring size and I will see that Santa Claus sends you the signet ring.

This letter seems mostly [.....smudged.....] but I am writing on my knee and some of the lads are trying to play some pranks on me. The bugle will blow "lights out" soon, so I must say Good-Night.

With much love,

Norman

P.S. "To be Continued" - soon.

R.S.V.P.

This second was penned by Norman to his wife, Fairfax, and their young children.Even after witnessing the horrors of World War One first hand, he again responded when his country came calling a second time:

St. Jerome, P.Q. - April 28, 1941

Dear Family,

By the time you read this I will be away from home on the start of my journey overseas to do my bit for my family and Country.

As I sit here thinking I realize what it means to myself and yourselves to have me go and I just want you all to know that night and day my thoughts will be with you and I will be looking forward to the time if God in his goodness spares me to come back to you. I thought a long while about it before joining up and I still think that if you all are to grow up and have a normal life that first of all it has to be made safe for you and your children. It's no use if this thing has to be done all over again in another fifteen or twenty years just when you are bringing up your families and your Mother and I are gone.

When I am away I want all of you to think of your Mother and give her of your best.

Clare - I look on you as the head of the house and I want you to give the younger ones good counsel and advice and do all in your power to take my place.

Margaret - carry on so that I will always be proud of you and carry the family name high in every way.

Sumner, Delmer, and Rilma - do you best every day to help your Mother and try and make things easier for her.

Remember, in doing this you will be helping me over the rough spots because whenever I think of you it will be made easier for me when I know that you are all soldiers holding the line at home.

Every night a supper time I will think especially of you all and I want you when you sit down to the table to say Grace in your turn and at the same time as Grace just add that Daddy and Ian will be brought home safe. Will you do this for me - and I will be doing the same where I am.

Now good-bye and God Bless You all - Mamma - Clare - Margaret - Sumner - Delmer and Rilma.

Write me when you can and always be proud come what may of your Husband and Daddy.

Despite being torpedoed on his way to Europe, Norman lived to fight through the Second World War and returned home to his family. Sadly, this brave man passed away years before I was old enough to know the significance of his contribution to my country. I would have loved to thank him in person.

Never forget.

I just returned from a weekend trip to Vermont where I visited my cousin and her family. One of the highlights of any visit is getting to spend some face to face time with my godson, who has just recently turned ten. Since they live a fair distance away I don't get to see him as often as I'd like, which is a bit of a shame.

Traditionally, god parents are supposed to ensure that a child's religious upbringing is properly carried out, however since neither my family nor my cousin's are particularly religious I seem to have perverted this role into something much more geeky: I have been ensuring that my godson's video game upbringing is adequate.

It all started two or three years ago at Christmas: with my cousin's permission I bought the boy a copy of Pokemon for his Gameboy Advance. Up until then he had never tried a Pokemon game, however that single gift resulted in a prolonged Pokemon obsession that he is only now starting to climb out of. His collection includes all of the GBA and DS games - including the variant versions - as well as Pokemon Battle Revolution for the Wii, and the Wiiware Pokemon game. Merchandise-wise, the kid has a horde of plastic toys of all of his favorites, and used to draw unique Pokemon in his spare time.

As if one obsession wasn't enough, earlier this year I started him down a new (and perhaps more insidious) path.

Back when I played World of Warcraft I used to have an alt on my cousin's server where I would play with her and her husband every so often. After a while they decided to introduce the game to their son, who liked it well enough, but he wasn't capable of playing the game by himself (at the time) because it is fairly complex. After a while I made a character to play with him and we started having a once a week static session where we could play for a couple of hours while chattering away on Ventrillo - it was a great way to get more interaction with my godson.

When I let my WoW subscription lapse in May the weekly gaming sessions with my godson were in jeopardy, however I had recently learned of Wizard101 and so we decided to give that game a shot together.

It quickly became apparently that Wizard101 had one huge advantage over World of Warcraft: a nine year old (at the time) could grasp one hundred percent of the game's core concepts with very little coaching, and could proceed to control a character with absolutely no outside assistance. For the first time in a year my cousin could just log her son on and let him play an online game with me without having to stay around to help play his character. It was an excellent revelation.

Fast forward six months and my godson and I have been playing Wizard101 nearly every week (with a one month break in the middle while they moved house) and are now level 16. In that time we've each spent a paltry $10 buying areas, and are well into Krokotopia. And he's hooked. Absolutely over the moon obsessed.

I hadn't realized it before visiting, but once again I've managed to foster a video game obsession in my godson. He talks incessantly about the game to anyone who will listen, has decorated his room with hand drawn Wizard101 pictures, has crafted a teleporter to Krokotopia out of a cardboard box, has recreated his entire spell deck (Myth/Fire) in hard drawn cards, has put together a second handmade deck for his three year old sister (Life/Ice), and has created a series of "quests" for the two of them to play. The boy is well and truly wrapped into the world.

While I was visiting I showed him the ins and outs of Wizard101s crafting system, and then as an extra special bonus, I bought him a $10 mount (he chose a broomstick) for his character. Considering that he's been raving about wanting one since they were added to the game a month or two ago, he was utterly thrilled.

As much as some people believe that video games (and specifically MMOs) can make a mess of a young life, they have been an amazing way to engage my godson and interact with him despite living four hours away and in a different country. We both look forward to the chance to chat and game together for a couple of hours each week; a normal phone call would not even begin to compare. And instead of spending all of his time online (which his parents would not allow anyways) it has given him a creative outlet at home as well - he is constantly trying to hone his drawings to faithfully reproduce bits of the world that he has so much fun in.

I can only wonder what sort of thing I get him hooked on next.....

I dropped by my local EB Games on Tuesday to pick up my preordered copy of Dragon Age Origins, and walked out with my wallet a bit lighter than I'd intended:

Whoops.

A Boy and His Blob was purchased primarily due to nostalgia - I'm old enough to remember the original game on the NES - but also because I'm fairly certain that my wife is going to have a good time playing this re-imagining of the game as well. Likewise, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a pure wife-driven purchase; she has been eying up the sequel (The Diabolic Box) for weeks now, and I convinced her that we should play the original first.

I'll be starting up Dragon Age Origins just as soon as I finish Dawn of War 2.... I already have a character ready to go, and I completed Dragon Age Journeys weeks ago for the unlocks.

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If you have a few minutes, I highly recommend checking out the latest post on That's a Terrible Idea. Evizaer discusses different skill-based progression systems using Ryzom and Darkfall as two unique examples. It's an informative read.

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The big kerfuffle in MMO land today is the new World of Warcraft Pet Store. WoW has been offering an increasing number of supplemental microtransactions for a long time (server transfers, gender swaps, renames, etc.) but apparently fluff pets have pushed many people past their breaking point.

My opinion: Any game that forces you to pay for a subscription in order to play should NOT use microtransactions to allow players to obtain unique items or services that cannot be gained via normal game play.

Tobold is probably also right: the floodgates have been opened.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is perhaps the best co-op game for couples ever created. My wife and I just finished up story mode two nights ago, and it was the most fun that we've had with a game together in a long time. She already wants to go back and get 100% on all of the levels, however I've distracted her with A Boy and His Blob for now.

Lego Indiana Jones is an action-puzzler that follows all three of the original Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and the Last Crusade. Each movie is broken down into six levels in which you play the part of some of the major characters in the film - rendered entirely in Lego blocks - to act out an important scene.

The controls on the Wii make use of both the Wiimote (to attack and jump) and nunchuck (to move, perform actions, and switch characters) and mercifully no waggling. Game play is a combination of beat 'em up, platforming ,and puzzle solving in equal parts. Everything feels tight, fast paced, and most of all fun.


While I'm sure that Lego Indiana Jones is a fine single player game, I have yet to play it that way, and in fact the entire experience seems to have been created with two players in mind anyways. In each level the players have control of between two and four characters (six in free play mode) which can be freely rotated through. My wife usually maintained control of all of the secondary characters while I played primarily as Indy.

Puzzle solving involves locating and combining various elements in the world to overcome an obstacle, or else using character-specific abilities to navigate the environment. For the most part these puzzles are straight forward, but there were a few instances that stumped my wife and I for upwards of twenty minutes at a time, and at least one that sent us to Game FAQs to cheat. On top of the required puzzles, each level in the game contains ten optional artifact pieces to locate as well as a parcel to find and deliver; puzzles surrounding these rewards were often far more devious, and after our story mode play through we had only found 30% of the total secrets.

Co-op combat is just plain silly fun. Unlike many games, Lego Indiana Jones embraces friendly fire, and it is entirely possible - even likely - that players will kill each other by accident during a whirling melee. I can't begin to count the number of times that my wife nailed me in the back of the head with a shovel..... over time I began to think that it was on purpose.


One of the things that Lego Indiana Jones got really right is the notion of forgiveness. Players have infinite lives, and all that is lost by dying is some of the Lego coins that you have collected (which are completely optional, and are only used to buy fluffy unlocks between levels). This lack of punishment is so important in a game like this because it allows the two players to have completely different skill levels and not impede each others progress and continue to play together. My wife sucks at platformers and generally dies the first five times she tries to make any given jump - however she was not excluded from progressing through the game for failing, and so was able to continue playing. Even more interestingly, on jumps that she got too frustrated with all she had to do was temporarily give up control of her character and the game would make the jump for her, provided that I had already cleared it - she could then rejoin penalty-free seconds later.

Lego Indiana Jones really is the perfect co-op game for couples, and I've heard great things about the rest of the Lego gaming franchise. Once we are ready for a new Lego game we'll be targetting Lego Star Wars..... and my wife has told me that she already has dibs on Jar Jar Binks.

Back in my high school days I had way too much disposable income and absolutely no sense of responsibility; as a result I blew hundreds (thousands?!?) of dollars on Magic: The Gathering cards.... and became a pretty darned good player. It wasn't long before reality hit and I needed to pay for higher education, and so my M:TG collection was sold off for way less cash than it was worth. I never got back into the game; the price tag is far too prohibitive with inconvenient real life commitments like a student loan and a mortgage, not to mentiopn all of the other day to day bills.

So excuse me while I hold my breath in the desperate hope that Magic: The Gathering Tactics is not simply another way to milk cash out of addicted consumers, and is instead a wonderful blend of PC gaming and collectible card game play. Not that Wizards of the Coast are saying anything yet... the best information we have is contained in a teaser trailer over on Shack News. But a man can dream, can't he?!?

Insta-update:
Noooooooooooooo!!!! That sound is a little piece of my soul dying. From Wired.com:

Unlike the recent (and excellent) Xbox Live Arcade game Duels of the Planeswalkers, Tactics will incorporate the collectible mechanics that make the card game tick: Players will expand their teams by purchasing booster packs and starters, then use their new acquisitions to customize their spellbooks.

The pay-as-you-go model should be familiar to those who played Magic on table tops, or the online PC game. And the gameplay will likely feel something like Dungeons & Dragons: Miniatures Game, the tabletop war game also published by Wizards of the Coast.

Tactics will feature characters and spells from the universe of the popular collectible card game. Players will be able to take their customized team of creatures to battle through solo scenarios or take them online to compete against others.

Regular expansions, tournaments, achievements and rankings are also forthcoming.

Money-grubbing bastards. Is it too much to ask for a version of Magic: The Gathering that won't put a person into the poor house?

Just a note that I have this coming week off from work (first week off since last Christmas!) and so posting on Teeth & Claws may be less than regular. My wife and I have a mammoth list of things to do during our staycation, which should keep me running around the city and surrounding countryside quite nicely.

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Like most of the gaming blogosphere, I picked up a copy of Torchlight last week and have been slowly puttering through the story. In all honesty, the main reason I bought the game now instead of waiting was that I wanted to be part of the conversation for a change instead of talking about a game long after everyone else has moved on. I'm eagerly anticipating listening to my favorite podcasts talk about their experiences this coming week, and have already enjoyed the bustle of blog activity that Torchlight stirred up.

After hearing from various sources that normal mode is trivial, I decided that my first play through would be on Hard mode (although not Hardcore/permadeath). My character, Thursday, is a level 11 Alchemist following the Lore path. I have a herd of pets joining my trusty lynx, Thimble, in raising hell while I sit back and direct traffic. Since I don't want to waste skill points enhancing any magic skills outside of my core summoning set I've invested heavily in Dexterity in order to wield dual pistols. I felt all smart about coming up with that solution until I moused over a Lore skill deep in the tree and discovered that I would eventually receive bonuses to dexterity-based weapons anyways.

As far as my impressions go, I think that Torchlight is a fun update of Diablo that has all the same strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor. It is an excellent pick up and play game that lends itself to filling half hour-sized holes in the day, and can easily devour far more free time if you are not careful. On the other hand, it is just as shallow as the Diablo games, and I know that it will not have any strong lasting hold on me.

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My wife and I have been doing a lot of gaming recently. We just polished off the story mode of Lego Indiana Jones (Wii) this afternoon, and she is insisting that we replay all of the levels in free play mode to get 100% on the game. That is not something that I would bother with if it was just me playing, but if she wants to be a completest then who am I to stop her? I'll be doing a full post mortem on the game soon.

In other wife gaming news, we bought a new laptop for her today and one of her big requirements was that it had to be gaming-capable. My wallet cried, but again - who am I to stand in the way of gaming? She really wants to try World of Warcraft or another game of that ilk, so I'm planning on trying to steer her towards Dungeons & Dragons Online. Torchlight also caught her eye, and I expect I'll be giving Runic another $20 shortly.

One of the nicest features of Dungeons and Dragons Online is that the game comes packaged with a built in party voice chat system. So long as a player has a microphone, the game allows them to chat with the people they group with without having to connect to an external server. Unfortunately for me, I have had a hell of a time getting my mic to work with DDO.... however I finally solved my problem.

Symptoms
This guide may be useful to players who have the following symptoms:

• Microphone works in all other applications except DDO. (i.e. Ventrillo, Skype, etc)
• Your audio drivers are all up to date.
  
• In game DDO microphone settings are all correct (voice chat enabled, correct device selected on the audio tab, volume is turned up, push to talk).
• Can hear others chat, but others cannot hear you (although your name turns green when you talk so the game registers that you're trying to chat).
• Mic test in DDO registers no sound.

Basically, you're someone who has looked into the problem and tried all of the standard solutions, and somehow chat still does not work in DDO; it does, however, work perfectly in every other application so you know you have a working mic and driver..

Now there's one other thing that's important for this guide:

• Your computer has multiple microphone jacks (usually front/back).
  

Solution
The solution - at least for me - involved messing with my audio device settings ever so slightly. My particular audio drivers are from RealTek, so if you are using something else you'll have to find similar settings in your own software.

1. Open the RealTek HD Sound Manager. (Right click system tray icon and select 'Sound Manager'.)
2. In the upper right corner of the Sound Manager, click 'Device Advanced Settings'. (figure 1, below.)
3. In the dialog that pops up, ensure that the Recording Device selection is 'Separate all input jacks as independent input devices'. (figure 2, below)
   
4. Click 'OK' and exit out of the Sound Manager. For bonus points, reboot to ensure that Windows knows that you're serious.

Now, before you start the game ensure that your microphone is plugged in, otherwise DDO will not detect it (even if you plug it in mid-game). Once the game is booted up, ensure that your Audio settings are pointing to the audio device for the microphone jack that you are currently plugged into. In my case it's called 'RealTek Microphone (front panel)', however you may have something slightly different.

You microphone should hopefully now be working with DDO. Enjoy!