Rituro, Internet Warrior

Have a safe and happy holidays, everyone. I'll be back in the new year to regale you all with nerdy tales and geeky conquests. Be safe!

First it was young Ben Steiner getting his moment in the spotlight with the Vancouver Canucks as a junior reporter; now, crooner extraordinaire Michael Bublé is the lucky so-and-so to live out a dream with the hockey team, signing a one-day contract to join on a practice skate.

For a guy who reportedly re-arranges his work schedule to either attend or watch Canucks games, the opportunity to go one-on-one with Roberto Luongo must've been the thrill of a lifetime. The fact that he rang his shot off the post? Even better. Plus, let's not forget just being on the ice with some of the greatest hockey players in the NHL:

(Full gallery at the Vancouver Sun.)

So, it appears my two paths to getting one of these fabled moments with the Canucks are as follows:

1) De-age until I'm 11 years old and become a junior reporter;
2) Establish myself as a worldwide sensation who also happens to be a fan.

Well, nobody said it was going to be easy...

Another chapter has been written in (as nobody calls it) the Second Great Magic War. My wife and I have taken our battles... to the next frontier.

No, not space; that's the final frontier. I'm talking about our computers, specifically Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. I've already been playing the game for a while with some Ducksoupians but it was only recently that I finally managed to convince my wife to give the digital version of Magic a shot.

Historically, Magic video games have been hit-or-miss. Battlemage? Miss. Shandalar? Hit. Battlegrounds? Miss. It all comes down to the execution of the gameplay, regardless of year or platform; present a compelling or intuitive take on the card game and you have a winner. Fail, and hordes of Magic fanatics will shun your game with the might of their collective nerd-dom.

(That being said, full disclosure: I actually liked the "conquest" metagame that made up part of Battlemage. Pity the rest of the game was atrocious.)

So, with all that to consider, does Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 hit or miss? In short, it hits a dinger out of the park and puts a sizable dent in a parked F-150 in the parking lot. (In other words, good, but with issues.) The combat interface is very slick, albeit with some clear signs of "console-itis" (namely, sluggish response to mouse input but sharp keyboard response). The campaigns and challenge puzzles all provide varying degrees of enjoyment, usually positive, though some of the bosses are unenjoyably difficult. The Magic decks themselves are by and large preset themes but you can unlock additional cards through repeated victories and tweak your deck by adding/removing won cards. It's not as flexible as, say, taking a real-life collection and making whatever deck you desire, but that's the point: if you want to make decks, play the real version. If you want to play a quick game of Magic: The Gathering against friends over the internet or even the passable AI, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 scratches the itch very well indeed.

As an added bonus, the video game comes with a code for a free foil promo card -- Frost Titan -- and some core edition starter decks for the physical game. If I could just find a way to sneak those cards into the digital game, I might be able to shut down the lethal "Ancient Depths" deck my wife has been sporting and win a game or two.

Pardon the Ray Liotta impression, but as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Vancouver Canucks reporter. Sure, watching hockey games on TV as a kid were pretty fun and who wouldn't want to lace up a pair of skates and take to the ice, but the real fun always seemed to be in the broadcast booth, calling every shot and every save.

You can imagine, then, how a young me would've leapt at the chance to be a "Canucks Junior Reporter", an honour recently bestowed on 11-year-old Ben Steiner. Heck, even older me would've leapt (and would still leap) at the chance. Being in the dressing room scrums, scouting out practice... it's the stuff a sports fan's dreams are made of and no doubt young Mr. Steiner will remember the experience for the rest of his life.

That said, I think we can all take away two valuable lessons from Ben's brief time as a reporter:

1. Ask the question. No question is too easy or too simple to get a good quote.
2. No matter how itchy your knee is, wait until after the press conference to scratch.

I'll admit it; initially, I was very "meh" over Minecraft. Whenever someone tried to convince me to give it a try, my typical response was something like this:

"So, all you do is pick up blocks and move them around? Hm, that's... um, interesting. I guess. Kinda sandbox-y for creative types? Yeah, all right. Interesting. Hey, is that Team Fortress 2? Sorry, gotta go..."

This continued well through Minecraft's lengthy "open beta" period, during which the most vocal lobbyist from the pro-Minecraft crowd was my little brother. Being a veteran of Roblox, he clearly "got" the appeal of Minecraft and was more than eager to try and win me over to the land of creepers and cobblestone. It felt like every week he'd be making another pitch for me to get a full (i.e., paid) Minecraft account so we could go mine-clearing or house-building or strip-mining or whatnot. The response, however, was the same: thanks, but not interested.

Finally, my brother's persistence paid off as I began watching a series of YouTube walkthroughs from 2010. Following SeaNanners' narrated guide through surviving the first few hours of Minecraft, I slowly but surely began to understand the appeal of the game. It wasn't just about moving blocks or punching cows -- it was about creating your own ecosystem in order to survive another day, while searching for the materials to build whatever you desire. A simple stone house? An elaborate brick getaway? An upside-down wooden cabin that floats above the ocean? A pyramid of cacti stretching across a vast, empty desert? Go nuts. Let your imagination run wild.

(Speaking of, quick plug for Disco, a Minecraft user whose creations are mind-boggling.)

One birthday gift and many, many hours of delving into the blocky world of Minecraft later, I am completely hooked. Projects have included: exploring a series of massive underground ravines in my first mine; starting a logging company with my brother by turning an empty peninsula into a thriving forest; paving a highway from said forest all the way back to the players' starting point; constructing a stone castle to guard a narrow strip of land between a lake and the ocean; discovering an enormous cavern network underneath the ocean(!); and helping construct the lengthy, alternate-dimension-spanning rail network to take players from the "old world" to the "new world" -- a patch of land some 10,000 blocks away from our original starting point.

Currently, I'm working on a massive stone bridge spanning Golden Gate-esque from one of the snowy "new world" mountains to my tiny, submerged hut built on a sand bar. I'll be sure to post pictures once it's complete.