The Best Problem Ever

Oh c'mon guys... Little Big Planet, Fallout 3, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Spider-Man Web of Shadows, Dead Space, Eternal Sonata, Star Ocean: The First Departure, Far Cry 2. These are all games that are out or will be by the end of this week. All of these are A-level titles that I've been looking forward to for months. I don't even have enough money to pay for all of these, much less the time to devote to each of them. Hell, I still haven't even beaten Mega Man 9 because I've been so busy. Not to mention next month (Resistance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, and so many more...). I'm swimming in great games here.

So why couldn't these have all been released this summer, when I had time, and a job?

Oh well, it's pretty stupid to complain about too many good games coming out anyways. Aside from a few titles, it's not like I can't get them later next year, when I have money and could possibly have time (though I highly doubt it).

The big question here is if I can keep myself from snagging Little Big Planet and Fallout 3 this weekend. I'm just not sure I have that much self-control.

Triumphant Return

If you've been following my blog over the last few weeks you've most likely noticed that my posts, when I write them, have been fairly succinct and not of particularly high quality. I have publicly blamed this one school and the general business of my life, but that is a half-truth. To be honest over the past two months or so, I have had a very hard time writing and began to feel that it was a chore, rather than as something I truly enjoyed. So, instead of writing well-written, clearly thought-out posts I've been dashing a few lines off and leaving my computer to go play video games or take a nap.

Then this last week happened.

The weekend before last I was able to go sailing with my family, an act I haven't done in over three years, and for perhaps the first time in at least as much time I felt at ease. I wasn't trying to impress someone, when I was helping out on the boat (which was surprisingly not very often thanks to my brother's seemingly boundless energy) it was with a feeling of generosity and a desire to real work rather than to keep everyone happy with me, and most importantly, I felt completely comfortable around my brother.

I love my brother, and aside from a few select moments, I always have. However, for the past few years I've felt distant from him. I could feel the awkward silences between us and felt that rush of embarrassment to cover them up with stilted dialogue. This last time I saw my brother I didn't feel that at all, I just felt like we were brothers again, and it was really nice to have that back.

Aside from this I've been re-playing Persona 3, and aside from remembering what a good game it is, I've been remembering all of the lessons it taught me about life the first time I played through it. I had forgotten to enjoy life, that my time is inherently limited and I should do everything I can to become who I want to become and do what I want to do. I had forgotten that lesson, and like all students I had to be taught it again, and will probably have to do so again several more times in the future, but at least I know where a good teacher is.

Finally last night ended with me staying up until two in the morning revising a poem I had written. I'm not a terribly huge fan of poetry, but as a creative writing major I have to take advanced writing poetry, and my assignment for today was to bring in a poem that I had taken to workshop and revised. The poem I decided to re-work was the first poem I had written for this course, and had slapped together an hour before class because I had almost forgotten about it. The original was serviceable enough, it had a slight nursery rhyme slant to its sound, but there were numerous mistakes and errors in its beat and rythmn. Because I had to head to school early today, and it was about 7 P.M. when I started the revision I had no intentions of truly revising this poem, and was merely going to give it a minor facelift, call it good, and head to bed after I finished my other homework.

This didn't happen.

I spent the next four or five hours poring over the poem, reading it aloud over and over until, finally, I felt that it sounded right to me. The first thing I noticed was how much time had passed, the second that I had barely felt like fifteen minutes had gone by, then I realized how happy I felt. I had regained my joy of writing, and all it took was a little coffee, a little music, and a crappy poem.

After I finish this final paragraph I am going to go work on a project that I have been putting off ever since I returned to school this semester. This project is perhaps the most important thing I will do this year, but I couldn't get myself to devote time to it. Now, thanks to a sailboat, my family, a video game, and a no-longer shitty poem I can finally get to work on creating my future, and I couldn't be more excited about it.

Until I write again, Vale et Valete!

YAWWWN

Well, that was the least interesting debate I've ever watched. I'm going to blame it all on the crowd. I mean honestly, they were throwing lowball questions when they should be trying for screwballs. Not to mention how absolutely un-townhall that was like.

Between this boring debate and my sore throat/runny nose I'm probably going to head to bed early. I'll post something with a little more content if my roommate's radio show inspires, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Stupid school with its germs and weakening my immune system.

Keep 'Em Close

I have a terrible poker face.

Well, only partially. I have a hard time remembering the differences between straights and flushes and what exactly trumps what, so it's usually pretty easy to tell when I think I might have something good because I'm scratching my head. On the other hand, my face barely registers emotion most of the time. I'm not quite sure how this happened, the rest of my family is quite active with their faces, but unless I'm having one of the best days of my life my lip won't even curl. It's so bad that I can tell if I had a really good day because my face hurts from smiling more than it's used to.

This attribute is not nearly as useful as one may think. I often find that people think that I am unhappy or that I dislike them because I don't smile. 9 times of out of 10 I actually like the person and I just feel comfortable enough around them that I don't have to pretend to smile in order to make them comfortable. I often wonder how many people have thought about talking to me only to be rebuked by my lack of facial notification.

In the end I like my natural tendency though. It gives my smiles a much more genuine feel, and those that know me can easily tell when I'm really having a good time. I guess it's the same reason why I am loathe to abuse swear words, I prefer their impact to remain at a high level, smiling frequently would weaken the expression's power. It also helps in the classroom, as I look like I am very studious at all times. More importantly, however, is the fact that it doesn't put my emotions out there for others to read. When I dislike a teacher they get the same fake smile I used when I didn't know anything about them, so they don't gain the bias that can so dangerously affect my grades. Comparing this to most of my friends who will actively explain to a professor how much they dislike them and I can only wonder if my inability to show emotions quickly or easily causes me the think through my emotions more than others. That, perhaps I have more time to recognize my emotions and to foresee their affects/effects. Of course it could just come from my learning to deal with my anger problems.

Still, I do have to wonder. So many of the students I see at school are so open about how they feel, it's like looking at a picture book when I'm used to reading through academic texts. Is this emotional outburst a bonus to humanity, or are we losing something with the transition. I can see students who look like they're on the verge of tears over a scraped knee, yet even my friends aren't aware of when I'm in pain unless I choose to actively show it.

Perhaps, as I get closer to the end of my time at this institution, I am beginning to see the students in a more childish view. That I am finally ready to leave behind this immaturity. That may explain why I feel so critical of the student body lately, and yet... I feel that my generation is woefully unprepared to take on the burden of responsibility. I fear some terrible war will break out on American soil, because I know that perhaps only a couple dozen of the thousands on my campus will be anything more than a hindrance in such a situation. I worry, because I feel that my campus is one of the more mature undergraduate student bodies in the nation, and when they make me feel like I'm sitting in class with a bunch of preschoolers...

So, how is your poker face?

P.S. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have terrible poker faces, they're as easy to read as Charlotte's Web.

Eyes Open, Minds Open, Memories Lost

I find it very interesting that human beings used to rely almost entirely on our memories to actually remember things. Even a culture as temporally close as the Romans relied almost exclusively on their memories to remember quotes and day to day activities (scrolls aren't the easiest medium to scan for a quote through). Yet here we are today, and we can barely remember what day of the week it is.

I was sitting in class today and discussion turned to the vice-presidential debate. I hadn't had time to catch up on it yet, but I took note of what the people in my class remembered about the debate so that I could discuss their points with myself when I read the transcript later. Do you know what I found out?

They were, universally, wrong about what the candidates had said.

Most specific in my mind is one of the classmates going on and on about how Sarah Palin had used the term "hockey-mom" five times in less than twenty minutes. According to the transcript and my own viewing of the debate, Sarah Palin used the term "hockey-mom" once and it wasn't even in reference to herself (the big point that the student was going on about).

Despite these fallacies, my classmates were taking the points raised at their word and formulating their opinions based on them, and I would have joined them if I weren't such a skeptical personality. Somehow this seems very wrong to me. That at a higher institution of learning, in classes where they are always told to probe for the deeper meaning and to never take anything at face value these students aren't even bothering to get their facts straight when it comes to who they will vote for in November. Did they just not get the lesson that this school is trying to drill into them? Did they not understand that we aren't here to get degrees but learn how to learn on our own, so that we can continue our betterment as human beings beyond the classroom?

Hell, did they even read the mission statement for the school that they're paying $43,000 a semester to go to?

You See The Digital World Is The Opposite of The Real...

Alright, so I'm not fully recovered from my paper writing yet (I just succesfully managed to argue for the digital world in Digimon as a Gothic construction, which terrifies me). Due to this, and the fact that I completely spaced on watching the vice-presidential debate tonight and now have to watch it on youtube so as not to be ripped to shreds by my schoolmates, I will be heading to bed now rather than creating a post of any real substance. Suffice to say, there shall be a sort of make-up post tomorrow to counteract this bout academia influnced insanity.

Why Do Papers Take Over My Mind So Much?

Paper paper paper paper paper. That's kind of my though process right now so uh, no post unless you really want more of that.

Technically It's Not Really Apocalyptic Because...

Doom, Gloom, Despair. These are the things that confront me as soon as I arrive on campus everyday. I've heard people talking about the stock market crashing, of Great Depression levels of unemployment, endless war, and even the destruction of the world.

And I'm tired of it. I'm sitting in my apartment, on my computer typing away, just like I was six months ago. Nobody I personally know has been affected by the sub-prime mortgage loan crash. My bank still runs like it always did, though it didn't invest nearly as heavily in something so stupid as the other banks did. My life has not been changed at all right now, and unless you were working for one of these companies that collapsed, or were in dire need of a loan or planning to start a new business than I'm guessing neither have you.

This isn't to say that people haven't been affected, certainly many lives have changed drastically because of these events, but I know for a fact that none of the young men and women I have talked to on my campus are among them. Yet they still proclaim that America is doomed.

I ask why?

What is this fascination of our youth to see the world in such an apocalyptic view; to claim depression and stress is making them contemplate suicide when they are having some of the most fun and stress-free times of their lives? Why are these young people afraid to be happy, to enjoy life?

Perhaps it's because I have several conditions that at the very least make me aware that my body is in pain at all times, or that I know that I've suffered far worse; but these youths all seem like wimpy children to me. I feel like I could make them divulge their deepest secrets with nothing more than an indian rug burn. Am I just that skinned, or are the young men and women of my generation really this unable to withstand the difficulties of life?

My current theory is that they didn't get enough of three vital things as children. One, not enough milk and dirt in their diet, yes dirt, it strengthens the immune system (also has iron and some other stuff at times). Two, not enough rough-housing. I blame that whole safe-parent culture that developed and decided that kids weren't allowed to hurt themselves anymore. Three, not enough saturday morning cartoons.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go study for a latin quiz while watching an old saturday morning cartoon, in this case Digimon.

P.S. It's not really an apocalyptic view because an apocalypse simply a prophecy of the future given by a divine being usually involving some sort of judgment and life after death, and an apocalyptic worldview... forget it, you get that idea.

Jumble of Topics

I've decided in my infinite wisdom that I shall no longer be making posts on Sunday, this of course applies retroactively so that I in fact did not forget to post yesterday, but instead carried out my schedule as normal.

Alright, I forgot about Sunday, but I am thinking about abandoning Sunday posts. My mind is just too scattered from the weekend to come up with anything coherent in the twenty-minutes-before-midnight-when-I-happen-to-remember-I-need-to-post-something (ah that was beautifully disgusting).

It seems that I can't avoid talking about the economic crisis that faces us as a nation today, so here's my big thought: When everyone get so fucking stupid?

I wince at typing the swear word, but its impact is necessary to fully convey how I feel about everyone involved in this whole fiasco. What idiot though that lending money to people who can't pay it back was a good idea? What morons thought that the idiot was onto something good? What retard didn't tell the morons that they were doing something incredibly foolish? What dunce forgot to look at what these companies were doing and step in?

I have slight compassion for those who actually took out these loans, but only because of their lack of income, though if they weren't dumbasses they would realize that they're taking out money that they couldn't possibly pay back, often for things they knew that they couldn't afford when there were more reasonable alternatives. Yes I know that this is a huge generalization on my part, and that this was not the case everywhere, but I've seen enough people living well beyond their means that I'm going to generalize like this.

Hell. I'm living beyond my means.

I have no source of income and am laden with more student debt than I would ever care to know. All this and I live in an apartment off campus that's costing me a good deal more than if I had stayed in the dorms.

I, however, have parents who are willing to back me financially throughout my undergraduate studies, and for their generosity (well beyond clothing, feeding, and raising me) I will be eternally grateful. I fully intend to spend the rest of my life paying my parents back for all that they have given me, and I know that I will never be able to pay back even a third of what they have given me.

People of The United States of America, you can live without a car, you can share a single room apartment amongst a family of four, you can live without a T.V., you don't even need a computer. Look at where you are, what you can afford and learn to get by with as little as you can, so that in the future you can have all of the things that you thought you needed.

Just, please, everyone stop saying that it's the end of the world, because every time you do say so, the end takes another step closer.

limburger Cheese

Woops, forgot to post last night, I blame brain fog filtering in from too much homework (well that and the new router I got freeing up my laptop in my apartment). There should be a post tonight, assuming I'm not too braindead from the extra homework I'll be doing since I have to stay on campus until... sometime...

P.S. Don't ask about the title, I don't know.

Q'es'ion

I won't say much tonight, my brain is still reeling from discussing Maccabees 1+2 earlier today and I have to study for a latin exam tomorrow. However I wanted to mention my feelings on a particular topic, and perhaps even get some of your opinions on it as well. The topic in question being proper nouns with comma's in them.

You have all seen them, Shak'Ti, P'Telt'tar, Yd'rg'dr'sl, the last being a particularly fanciful spelling of Yggdrasil I once saw.

I hate them myself, whenever I see them in print I never rightly know how to pronounce them, and even when I do my mind seems to skip past them and invent some new phrase to say instead every time I come across it.

Yet when I hear them being spoken aloud they provide some of the most beautiful and powerful proper nouns that I've come across.

So, how do you feel about them?

Words Not Straight Going

5 hours of reading anceint Jewish religious texts means no post tonight.

Sunday Statement

Yes there was no post on Thursday. No I didn't forget about it.

The reason there was no post on Thursday is three short words, "Old Man's War." Specifically I am referencing, John Scalzi's book, Old Man's War.

I don't go out and buy very many science-fiction novels, usually because they aren't worth the ink on the page, so my not catching onto this work for 3 years doesn't come as a surprise. What does come as a surprise is that I haven't yet purchased any more of Scalzi's books. Old Man's War was one of the best science-fiction novels I have read in years. The story and setting feels very much like "old-sci-fi", like the science-fiction novels I found while cleaning out my grandmother's house, but the clear and inventive writing turns this possible (I actually like many of those old sci-fi novels) con into a very positive pro. To top the cherry on the cake, it goes really well with the space stage in Spore, so I happened to read it at just the right time.

Go out and buy it, read it, it only takes a day if you put everything besides homework and classes off.

I'm not joking, go get it.

Will Wright's Greatest Success

Spore is without a doubt the best game I have played all year.

This is my conclusion after finally reaching the space stage (the last of the 5 stages in the game which act to separate the different game types within Spore) and dinking around a little bit.

I had fun with the first four stages. I enjoyed fighting for survival as a cell. I had a very good time watching the little beast I made evolve under my careful guidance in the creature stage. I felt a swell of pride as my little monsters united together and routed the other beasts from the continent in the tribal stage. I had a glorious time seeing my handcrafted empire take over the planet in the civilization stage.

In short I had a very good time with the first four stages of the game, and I would have felt my $50 purchase was worth the money I spent had the game ended there.

But then space stage came along.

In the hour that I have played the space stage, I have had more genuine fun than I've had in the last three weeks combined.

The way the galaxy is presented; how massive and ready-to-be-explored it feels. Combine this feeling of new discovery with a bond with my avatar stronger than any Final Fantasy could ever hope to accomplish. Well, let's just say it's a damn good time.

What excites me most of all is that this is a game my parents, or some little kids could play and get the same enjoyment out of. It's not complicated, at least not until the space stage, and each of the stages prepares you for the next. Top this off with the ability to create an avatar that emotionally invests the player to the game intrinsically, and these people who don't play games will find themselves losing track of time as they watch their little creation live out its destiny.

I recommend Spore to anyone and everyone, and encourage everyone who has it to show it off to as many people as possible.

Not So Triumphant Return

I sorely apologize to any and all who read this blog, though I still despise that word. I took a very large break from writing on this site due to a large amount of difficulties that appeared in my life. Beyond this, I had fully intended to start writing posts regularly again this previous Sunday. My only two answers as to why I did not write Sunday and Monday are both single words: School and Spore.

I do not intend for this bad (re)start to influence the rest of my posts on this site, and you may fully expect to read my impressions on Spore before 11:59 P.M. tomorrow.

Until then Vale, Valete!

P.S. I hate apartment hunting as well as the setting up of utilities and networks.

Ugh

No post tonight, blame pizza and stomach problems.

Aha!

So, had a little false start as evidenced by no post Sunday or Monday. All I can say is, blame summer and it's wondrously lazy days.

Eureka starts season 3 on the Sci-Fi channel today and I couldn't be happier. Eureka is one of my favorite shows. It has a beautiful mix of comedy, suspense, mystery and romance (I guess suspense and mystery are pretty close to the same thing). What I really love about Eureka is that they manage to create great whodunit mysteries despite their science-fiction base. Even better, on top of the whodunit there's usually a howdowedoit, or how they stop the ionic cooling array (or whatever) from blowing up the town. On top of everything the show has some really wonderful fake science, matched only by (off the top of my head) Futurama (which has an alarming number of master degrees and PHDs working on it).

Return To Forever

And I'm back. Alright, so I realize I've been gone a long time, let's just say that I had a lot things going on in my life that made it difficult to formulate even the most basic of postings. Consider this my official comeback note, after the weekend (and maybe even over it), I'm going to resume my regular posting schedule.

I Broke My Nail On A Rib Someone Didn't Want

Posts will continue to be infrequent for the time being due to my suddenly ridiculous lifestyle over the past week. Highlights include:

Training Dog New Trick
Getting New Job
Working At New Job Everyday
Getting Home At 1AM Because of New Job
4th of July With Grandmother
Helping Mother Around The House
Try To Figure Out Where I'm Going To Live In Two Months
Trying To Find Free Online Site So That I Can Discuss Secret Project With Someone
Working A Lot On Secret Project
Getting Chrono Trigger Soundtrack
Getting Disgaea Soundtrack
Reading Titans of Chaos Series
Attempting To Beat Metal Gear Solid 4

So yeah, I've been busy. It doesn't help that I'm apparently incapable of getting less than ten hours of sleep.

No Distractions

I'm working on something big in my head right now, so no posts until I've got it all settled.

It's YOUNG ADULT, Not OLD KIDS

Sorry about the short post tonight, there have been things going on that have required more of my attention and brainpower than I would have liked. I also apologize in advance for tomorrow, as I will be extremely busy and there is a good chance that I will forget the post entirely.

One thing that has always bugged me is how bookstores and libraries are categorized. You see, most of the books that I enjoy during my leisure time seem to come from the Young Adult section. Now this is not odd, seeing as how I am 21 years of age, a young adult in the full meaning of the word. However, I have been going to the Young Adult section as far back as I can remember. I quickly grew bored of the children's section, and the adult novels seemed to suffer from a lack of originality and a cornucopia of bland writing.

The bookcases of the Young Adult section seem to swell due to the enormity of the differences in maturity and reading levels required in it. On one shelf are the Boxcar Boys, tales I grew tired of in elementary school, yet right beside the boys lies the Titans of Chaos series, which requires an intimate and obscure knowledge of ancient myths, Einsteinian physics, string theory, quantum theory, chemistry, biology, Latin, French, German, Tolkien, The Once and Future King, the list goes on. The series is not one I could have read three years ago and understood, yet it sits humbly in the Young Adult section, ignored by those to embarrassed to be seen reading from the "kids section."

Either we as a society need to eradicate this fear of appearing childish, or we need to separate the Young Adult section into a few more categories.

P.S. I cannot recommend the Titans of Chaos trilogy (John C. Wright) enough, though you may have to do a bit of studying up beforehand, or at least keep a computer with internet access nearby, as there are a lot of obscure references.

He's Back!

First things first.

FRANK KLEPACKI IS WORKING ON THE SOUNDTRACK FOR RED ALERT 3!!!

Frank Klepacki's songs are some of the best in the RTS genre. Hellmarch is a literally embodiment of what Command and Conquer means as a video game. To me, the musical score in a video game is one of the greatest factors in how good a game can be. As such I cannot tell you how happy I am that Klepacki is working on a Command and Conquer title again.

For your enjoyment, I present Frank Klepacki's original Hellmarch (via YouTube).

LAN = Local Area Network

Outside of my close group of friends, I don't know that many gamers, or people with gaming related knowledge. As such, it's always a unique experience describing what a lan party is. While some people do take the time to try and understand, they are, unfortunately, the minority. When I reveal that I am heading to a lan party, or that I'm tired because of one, the conversation usually follows something along these lines:

Me: Man, I'm beat. That lan party was a lot of fun though.

Edward Example: A lan party, what's that?

Me: Well, it's a party where you get together with a bunch of friends and you all bring your computers with you so that you can play games.

E.E.: Wait, why would you get together to do that, can't you play with each other online.

Me: Well yes, but it's a lot more fun when you're all playing in a room together. Plus, since you're on a local network, you can play a game with each other that isn't online, so that way nobody can show up uninvited.

E.E.: If you're just playing games then why are you so tired? It's not like sitting in a chair is exhausting.

Me: There are always weird rules when you hang out with friends, but at most lan parties there's an unwritten rule that you can't go to sleep. If you do fall asleep, your friends will go on your computer and change your background and passwords and stuff. Plus there's all of the social interactions that go on whenever a large group of people get together, so it can be quite tiring, especially since gamers tend to fare on the introverted side of the spectrum.

E.E.: So let me get this straight. You take your computer, get it ready for transport, take it somewhere else, put it back together, play games for 24 or more hours, and then take it back home?

Me: Yes.

E.E.: All to play video games?

Me: Yes.

E.E.: You're crazy.

Me: And sleepy.

When you think about what happens at lan parties, and all of the work that goes into them, they are one of the craziest ideas, but I really suggest giving it a try sometime. Only with close friends, people tend to get a lot more irritable at five in the morning, and only if you're comfortable with it (there's nothing worse than being uncomfortable at a party, especially one this long). Lan parties are a lot of fun, and if you go through your life without going to one you are missing an experience like no other.

P.S. Written at 7:58 A.M. after staying up at a lan party, so forgive the grammar.

Yellowstone Is Awesome

So I just finished FreeFire by C.J. Box, it's a great mystery novel, but it really stands apart in its characterization of Yellowstone National Park. I love Yellowstone, it's my favorite place to visit, and not just because of its beauty or that I enjoy the smell of sulfur. There's one specific reason why I adore Yellowstone:

Yellowstone kills idiots.

It's true. The entire reserve refuses to stand stupid people, and has no compunction about eliminating them from the gene pool. Bears, buffalo, wolves, they all kill people who are stupid enough to try and feed them, but in Yellowstone the land itself takes action.

There are signs in the park that tell you to stay on the path or you will die. This is no joke, and the rangers at the park are not the nice people who urge you to stay on the path, they tell you to stay on that path or you will die, because you will. You see, most of Yellowstone (at least the most widely visited section) is actually a huge lake of boiling water covered in a thin dirt crust. Even experienced rangers fall through this crust regularly, and if you fall into the water they cannot save you in time. Of course, not all of the water is this hot, there are even springs that act as perfect natural hot tubs, but it is extremely difficult to tell the temperature of the water without instruments (most people assume you can tell by the color of the water, which is true, except there are a variety of bacteria found only in Yellowstone that can alter the color).

Yellowstone is a park that will kill you if you do not respect it, and every year it kills at least a dozen more idiots.

God I love Yellowstone.

P.S. There are some people killed by Yellowstone who aren't idiots and I don't mean to imply that they are. Yellowstone is a force of nature, and I love it for that, but I love it especially because it kills idiots with much more regularity. Also saw a human skeleton in Morning Glory Pool (pictured above) on one of my first visits to the park. My family didn't believe me until we got the story out of a park ranger the next year.

Grahahaha, So Tired...

I left my house within half an hour of waking up this morning, and got back at 8:30 P.M. I just finished dinner and nothing groundbreaking in the areas of life that I care about have been announced.

Have a good night everybody!

Slow(ish) Day

Other than a slight dread of going to the dentist tomorrow I have absolutely nothing that I want to say.

Well, okay, that's not entirely the truth. To be perfectly honest, I do have something
that I want to talk about. I spent all day today working on a secret project, but it's a secret project, so I can't talk about here now can I? Trust me though, in a few months time, all this secrecy will be well worth it.

Edit: I had seen previous screenshots and video, but Sonic may actually be back.

I Spent Today Making Monsters

The spore (Will Wright's new game) creature creator demo comes out tomorrow, but some clever little devils on the internet managed to get their hands on it a couple of days ago and released it early. Since the demo is free anyways, and since I fully intend to purchase Spore (the full game)
come September, I felt little guilt as I booted up the demo a day early.

My impression? If I wasn't planning on buying Spore before hand, I certainly would be planning to do so now.

What the Spore team has managed to do with procedural animation (the game engine creating animations on the fly rather than some guy hand-crafting the animation before the game's release) is astounding. While the demo for the creature creator is fairly limited in its parts selection, I have seen a massive variety of creatures, and they all move wonderfully, or creepily, or majestically, etc...

Perhaps the most incredible feat is how creatures are shared between people. Since this isn't the official demo, the servers for the online (and in-game) creature trading system is down, but you can still trade creatures with someone else by saving your creature for transfer (done in-game with a single button click), and then you send the 100KB or so .png image to your friend and he adds it to his creatures folder. Done and done. No hacking, no opening the console, and I don't even have a clue how an image file saves every single detail of your creature, but it does.

With Spore just on the horizon, it's hard to even care about EA's announcement about The Sims 3.

P.S. The Sims opened up gaming to a lot of women, I hope that Spore can act as an even better gateway.

Mon Pere

As I sit down to write tonight I am suddenly reminded of when I was in kindergarten and the teacher asked us to write about our hero. Back then I most likely wrote about Super Shark, an anthropomorphic shark that I made up because I felt like I was the only one who didn't have an imaginary friend. I never talked to him, and he was mainly just a list of things I thought were cool at the time; my family provided more than enough companionship for me, I didn't need to make anyone up.

Nowadays I wish I could go back and change my answer that day, now that I have a bit more experience and wisdom. If I could go back and change that answer, this is what I would write:

Who is your hero: My Dad.

What makes this person your hero: My father is the nicest, most selfless, intelligent man I know. My father spends a lot of time on the road due to his job, so he couldn't be home for a lot of big events, but every time he was home the whole house would change. I would watch my mom get happier (even when she was yelling at him). I would wake up to the sound of great jazz and pancakes, and the rest of the day the whole family would go out and have a blast. My father almost always did all of the cooking and cleaning when he was home (not to put the fantastic job my mother did down), and he is a wonderful cook. When my dad was home he would do every little thing you asked him, even if he was feeling tired, and every night that he could he would read to me and my brother, often after a taxing "airplane" ride for me where I would try my best to cling to the walls in order to stave off bed (which explains why he often fell asleep mid-sentence). And what a storyteller! My dad would make sounds, do voices, really put his whole heart and soul into the reading. I remember hearing a professional storyteller read to our class in middle school, a man whose job was literally to read books to people, and he sounded just like my dad did, even a little worse.

I know my dad worries about how much he was gone when I was younger, and I know what he would give to go back and be there for me and my brother. It hurts him, he feels so bad about it. I've told him many times how little it bothered me, because when he was home, he was there person and soul. When I look back at my childhood it barely feels like he was gone at all.

My dad is the guy who gives a hitchhiker a ride 300 miles out of his way, and makes a new friend at the same time. He's the kind of guy that you could ask for help from when you're having trouble financially and not feel ashamed.

My dad can build a trailer overnight, spend the next day driving, and that night prep a campsite for four people (including a fabulous dinner) without breaking his smile. If there is something I don't know how to do, or make, or find, I ask my dad, because I know that he knows, or will figure out a way.

I had anger issues when I was younger, and it's still an effort to control my temper, but my dad can take grievous slights and not be bothered at all. He is the calmest, kindest person I know, but I know that if he had to fight, he could, and boy could he. My dad defined what a warrior was to me, a man who would fight only as a last resort, but not be afraid to fight. To have fearsome strength, yet only use it when there was no other way.

I could go on and on, but recess is in five minutes, so I'll end it with this:

I love my dad with my whole heart, and when I grow up I only hope that I can be a fifth of the man he is.

My father defined what it meant to be a man, a warrior, a poet, even a cook to me, and to think that he only gets one day a year to celebrate that.


Happy Father's Day Dad!

I Thought You Were Cancelled

Before I say anything else I just wanted to mention that I did not forget yesterday's post. I decided to postpone the post until this morning so that I could finish the Starcraft Ghost novel.

When I saw the Starcraft Ghost novel I was pretty surprised, mainly due to the fact that I thought Starcraft Ghost had gone the way of Duke Nukem Forever (although considering Duke Nukem Forever is supposedly still coming out then perhaps that's not incorrect to say), but there it was. The novel doesn't reveal anything about the game, though there is a nice foreword that mentions that it's still being developed. Instead the book focuses on when Nova (the protagonist) first learns she has the psychic powers necessary for the ghost program. It starts off a little shaky, but the book gets a lot better and the author does a great job of creating Nova as a character, managing to differentiate her from Sarah Kerrigan quite a bit (which is hard when they're both psychic women who lose everything they ever cared about), which bodes very well for the game, assuming it ever comes out. My only concern is that certain events force Nova to forget this great past, and I sincerely hope that they somehow bring it back into play in the video game, because it could be very troubling to just ignore such a nicely prepared background.

Only Slightly Drugged

Started the day feeling sleepy, then went and had three fillings at the dentist, so I've been out of it all day. Anyways, this makes me happy to no end, and I can't get excited enough for the Ghostbuster game.

Nerd Time

I got my copy of the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition core books today and they look good. I took a pretty long look, and about the only complaint I might have is that the character classes might play a bit too similarly for some people's taste. Personally I like the change, it's simpler, more clearly defined, and there's a lot of good design in the new edition. The thing I like most of all is that it's a lot less complicated for new players, which in my eyes is never a bad thing.

I haven't taken a look at D&D Insider, the online computer stuff that has a free trial right now, but will eventually cost a certain amount each month (I think somewhere around 10-15 dollars). I like the idea of a character creator so that everyone at the table has the same view of your character, and I'm really interested in the online tabletop that should allow people to play D&D when they aren't in the same room, or state as the case is with the group I like to play with. The price seems a little steep to me, but I haven't seen it yet, and if enough of my friends get it, then I definitely will.

By the way, I really want a new Disgaea game, I mean c'mon, who doesn't want a game where you can attack people with the moon?

Fire and Freedom

I know I shouldn't be happy about this, but it seems to me that once you're getting burned at a church gathering you know you've become an important medium. I never really understood the idea behind book burnings (or destruction of any medium really). Supposedly it's to get rid of so it doesn't influence youths, but I feel that you'd get a lot more of an impact if you sat down with the kids and talked about what you were originally planning to burn with them. Discussion tends to do a lot more than just outright banning things, and in this case you're only banning what you've collected to burn, there's still plenty of new media coming in to replace it.

In the same vein, how the hell did Jack Thompson, a man who has tried harder than any other in America to restrict video games, get scheduled to be honored at America's Freedom Festival. The man is literally trying to take away freedoms! Have we forgotten what freedom means? Last I checked America was a country founded on the concept of freedom for all, not just what is appropriate according to one man's particular moral values. If the pastor in that first article wants to burn video games, he's free to do so (as long as he purchases them, don't want to deny one man's freedoms with someone else's).

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat watermelon and enjoy the rest of this fine night.

Seperated At Birth?

I watched a friend of mine replay Half-Life 2: Episode 2 this weekend and I noticed that Half-Life 2's female companion, Alyx, reminds me a lot of Beyond Good & Evil's protagonist Jade. Both are slightly asian women who fight in underground organizations, and both have allies who are good with machinery and have a predilection towards using tools as weapons (the crowbar and gravity gun for Gordon, and the wrench, hammer thing for Pey'J). Hell, they even look similar.

However, more important than any of the similarities I have mentioned is the fact that they both feel realistic. Both characters give off this feeling that you could meet them while waiting for a bus. Basically they feel like they're real people, which is something I feel that writers and developers in the game industry should take a closer look at (or the film industry for that matter).

Edit: Well apparently I'm not the only one thinking this.

My Monthly Drug

So yeah I have an addiction. In my defense I have heard nothing but good things about Beyond Good & Evil from some very good sources. It was also ten dollars and on Steam.

Interestingly enough, for the first time I encountered a problem when trying to boot up the game. The game worked, but the audio and video were out of sync, specifically, the video ran at 3-5x speed. It turns out that my computer was just too darned good for the thing. In a stroke of genius I figured out how to make it so that one of my processors ignored the program and then set the other processor to see the game as the lowest of it's priorities, which fixed the problem. It also made me really happy, because really, I'm running a fairly nice PS2 at maximum graphical settings and I have to trick my computer into not absolutely crushing it.

By the way, I'm about fifteen minutes into the game and I already am amazed with the character of Jade. She seems so, human.

What I've Been Up To

I've been thinking a lot about narrative structure lately. How to tell a story has become very interesting to me and as such I've been taking a look at a variety of mediums and what people have done with narrative structure with them. Here's a quick list of some of the titles that I've been looking at and what I find interesting about their narrative structure:

Video Games:

Grand Theft Auto IV - Gives players a lot of personal freedom while simultaneously forcing them down a specific narrative path.

Dragon Quest VIII: Gives little to no freedoms, and story is very structured and quite unsurprising, but feels more like a full world than most RPG's I've played.

Fallout 2: Has a specific narrative, but the player is only required to see the bare bones of it, most of the game is optional and mini-endings are given for every city you visit.

Webcomics:

The Dreamland Chronicles: Simple story with no surprises (yet), but I'm still enchanted by the story. The visuals combine with the fairy tale-esque story to capture my inner child.

The Last Days of FOXHOUND: Starts with extremely crude drawings and similar humor, and doesn't upgrade too much over the course of the series. Despite this it manages to not only remain comically consistent, but is also one of the best synopsis of the Metal Gear series up to MGS4, without showing Solid Snake once. The result is a second look at the enemies that I was able to put down so easily in-game, and now I wish I had been on their side.

Movies:

Iron Man: Simple premise, excellent cast and a lot of good, wry humor. The result is a story that is fun and never makes you feel bad (unlike The Last Days of FOXHOUND, which almost had me in tears).

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Simple premise, excellent cast (seem familiar), and a perfect treading the line with what could have been a terrible story. Proves that dangerous gambles pay off big (it even made me forgive the monkey scene).

This is just a small selection of what I've been thinking about, but I have noticed one thing in common with all of these, and that is that there is a story being told, one story, and while some may have multiple endings, they are still fairly limited in their scope. I'm curious if it would be possible to create something that has multiple plot threads that run together, but not into a single story, and give each of these threads multiple endings. I think I'm just tired of how multiple endings work in video games at the moment. Multiple endings are usually determined by one painfully-obvious choice, and the choice leads to a "bad" ending and a "good" ending. I wonder what it would take in order to make endings that felt more dynamic, more influenced by your actions over the course of the entire game, and what it would be like to see a game that has multiple "good" endings, letting the player decide what they feel is the best ending.

Maybe I'm just bored. The point is, if you like the Metal Gear and/or Metal Gear Solid series, you should really go read The Last Days of FOXHOUND, it'll give you a whole new experience.

P.S. Everything I mentioned here is good and I recommend seeing/playing/reading it aside from Dragon Quest VIII, which is mediocre at best (has good music and visuals, but a predictable plot and the game is a grind, 59 hours and level 30 of 99, that's just absurd).

Edit: Apparently it's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, woops.

I Need My Next Fix

This article saddens me, especially coming from the stereotypically less-PC Australia. I'm going to say this here and now, boys need aggressive physical activity and they need competition. Giving boys outlets for this need is very important (as it keeps them from acting out elsewhere), but so is allowing their entertainment to contain these qualities (not always of course) as well.

In unrelated news I really want to get a new game and it kind of frightens me. See, it's not like I don't have games to play, and I even have games that I haven't beaten. No, I just really want to buy a new game, for no real reason. Like an addiction. Am I becoming addicted to buying video games?

Or it could just be that I really want to play Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid 4.

So Much Hate

Apparently I'm still getting used to this being at home thing as I completely forgot a post for yesterday.

Anyways, Leigh Alexander is awesome again by thinking the same exact thing as me when I read this article.

Feministing and I have a unique relationship, or we did. I used to spend a good deal of time poring over the articles that appeared on the blog trying to figure out why I disliked the site. I couldn't figure it out for a long time, I mean, I like what their goal, and I feel in a global context feminism is still relevant (locally is a more complex topic), so why did I dislike them? I figured out that it was the anger that the writers voiced that turned me off. The sheer hate that permeated the articles made me nervous. Having figured this out I decided to lambaste them in one of my posts here, but I had to find an article to poke wholes in.

That's when I ran into a little bit of a snag.

You see, the writers at Feministing.com aren't bad writers, and they aren't bad journalists. While I may have disagreed with their message, everything they did was good work, so I couldn't have anything more than a personal beef with them. Then they slipped up and wrote this article on GTAIV, which the writer had not played. I didn't write the post that I had thought up partially because I have a number of friends who read Feministing and I didn't want to alienate them, but mainly I felt that it was too easy, and while I may foam at the mouth for the bad journalism that their article showed, I was still more worried about the anger and hate that I saw in their words. So for the moment you can consider Feministing and I at peace, the kind of peace where I send spies over at all times, but peace nonetheless.

T.O.E. Is Awesome

Rice Boy is all finished up. Go read it. I really enjoyed this series, it does a lot of unusual things, but the character of T.O.E. really intrigues me a lot. 

What are you still doing here? Go read Rice Boy.

Call to Action

So what happened to responsibility?

As my parents and I were leaving our local Grand Central Bakery we noticed that behind our car there was another car parked in such a fashion that it was impossible for us (and the two cars next to ours, as well as the three cars on the other side) to leave. Since this is very illegal, as well as a might annoying and dangerous, I decided to go back into the bakery and ask whose car that was.

Now I'm not saying that I wasn't a little angry, and I certainly wasn't the politest I have ever been, but I didn't yell and I certainly didn't swear. All I did was tell the lady who happened to own this vehicle that she needed to move her car immediately, that it was parked illegally and that it was a hazard. The employees of the establishment even backed me up and told the lady that she couldn't park there and had to move her car. Despite all of this, the woman said that I was a "bastard" and as she left she declared that it was, "people like you who are ruining this country."

Yup.

Everyone, please don't let people like this get away unopposed. If you see someone cut in line, park illegally, jaywalk, anything of that sort, please challenge them. Don't yell, don't swear, just tell them what they're doing is wrong and challenge what they are doing. Most of the time it isn't policeman that keep people from breaking the law, it's fear of social ostracism. Kids go tagging and breaking windows with their friends because they are afraid of being looked down on by their peers. Well guess what, it works the other way too. Don't let these people get away with their habits, go up to them and make them feel that there are consequences.

Hitting the Notes of My Soul

It has been exactly two weeks and one day since I returned home, but today was the first day that I have been able to listen to any of my music. For some people this may not be that big of a deal, but for me it's equivalent to being turned into a robot for two weeks. Something about music just fills me up, it makes me spark. I can write for an hour and get out one, maybe two pages if I'm lucky, but with music I can pump out ten pages of analytical academic writing with quotes pulled from relevant sources.

The reason why I haven't listened to anything is that I have to pump my music up so that it fills the room. I can't stand when music is going but you can still talk to people (a big problem at parties); my music has two volumes available, off and on. This makes it a bit hard to listen when there are people around.

So yeah, today was the first day that I've been, alone.

At all.

For two weeks.

That doesn't really happen to me. I finally feel like I have creativity again. Now if I could just get over this weird problem I have of not playing games when I'm home. I want to, and eventually I do, but it takes me a couple of months (and for those who think it's good because then I'm doing something else, they're wrong, I just sit around thinking about how I want to play games for hours).

By the way, here's three awesome video/songs that made me feel whole again today: 1, 2, 3.

P.S. I've got a new secret project that I'm working on. I don't have any details right now, but expect to see something pretty cool starting late September or so.

Memorial Day

To all those who died fighting, thank you.

To all those who served and survived, thank you.

To all those who are serving today, thank you.

Without you I couldn't do what I do today and I cannot thank you enough.

Fist, Gun and Whip

Go see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull it's good clean fun.The movie doesn't preach at you (except get an education), it doesn't have a political message and it doesn't carry some ulterior motive. The only thing this movie does is let you have fun. Sure it's a little unbelievable at times, and it rushes through some of the character interaction, but god damn, it's Indiana Jones and he's punching people!

Between this movie and Iron Man, I'm starting to really like simple plots that don't get in the way of action.

Oh and a stellar cast playing at the top of their game doesn't hurt (seriously, this is the first time I've seen LaBeouf playing a character that isn't Shia LaBeouf).

The En...?

Has anyone else noticed an annoying trend in movie and television writing lately? I swear, almost every movie or season finalé I watch these days has a cliffhanger ending. The movies have it a little less, at least the main villain is dead (well not in Eragon's case but that wasn't a very good movie anyways), but there's always some other, larger problem that remains unsolved. TV is worse though, like the CSI: New York season ender, which, I don't know, didn't end. They pull this cliffhanger and just expect viewers to sit with it until the next season starts? Some part of me has a feeling that people have been forgetting how to end stories, and especially how to conclude them. It used to be that an epilogue was a rare thing, but for the past few years I've been seeing them crop up left and right. And those little snippets that movies have after the credits roll, I remember when those used to come before the credits.

Really this is just a rant about me wanting a remake of FFVII on the PS3. Crisis Core was an amazing prequel (I can't believe I just put those two words together), it's story held on its own, but also deeply enriched the experience you get from FFVII. When they show that opening cinematic at the end of Crisis Core it made me want to pop in my FFVII disc right then and there. Only thing that stopped me was that the graphical downshift would have caused a nasty grinding noise and stalled the emotions that Crisis Core had built up in me.

If you are a fan of FFVII, or just want a fun (albeit easy) PSP game, I cannot recommend Crisis Core enough. Honestly, its the best game I've played on that system yet (also it has new game+ which every game with a good story needs desperately).

Good Riddance

I returned to Portland from school last Monday, but it wasn't until today that I finally felt at home. The day after I got back I got sick and on Wednesday my roommate showed up to crash at my place until his flight. This morning I finally took him to the airport and boy was it a relief. I like my roommate, he's a good friend, but I don't like hanging out with anyone for a week straight. About the only time where we weren't hanging out was when I was asleep. Add on that he lost his laptop's power cable so he was using my laptop and, well let's just say if he had stuck around for another day or two and he wouldn't be going back to Minnesota, ever.

What this means is I'm going to bed, and tomorrow I'm going to go get a job and start actually posting interesting things.

P.S. I still count this guy among my friends, it was just too much for too long to not start going a little crazy (especially with someone who likes to be entirely alone every couple of days).

New Idea

New Idea: Waterworld RPG and/or MMO. Great world prebuilt. Intriguing weapons. Driving purpose for story for dry land. Resource requirements/availability could make for an amazing gameplay system. 

C'mon, who doesn't want their own oil tanker battleship castle?

Return(ish)

Small post tonight due to various factors. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

This game, Alter Ego, has apparently been around for a while. It's a very fun life-simulation game (which I adore), and it's text/choice based (which I also love). Go, play it, enjoy it, and wait for me to attempt my own half-assed version (though mine will resemble a card game and not be online, due to a complete lack of coding skills and such).

Seriously, it's a hell of a lot of fun once you get past baby stage, though I do wish it told you how many turns are left in each stage.

Edit: forgot to link it, now fixed.

Notice

Posts will be of the random and intermittent variety until the Sunday after next due to finals tension, relief, and a bit of partying. I will try to keep posting as normal, but I make no promises.

Vantage Point

It's amazing what a little music can do to your mood. Fifteen minutes ago I was ready to rant and rave about another news writer putting down video games without pausing to look at the facts.
Ten minutes ago I started listening to some music. Now I just want to lie on my bed and look out the window.

With this new mentality, I have come up with a new game, I call it Vantage Point. You'll need: calming music (no rap, no rock, soothing tones only), and the internet. What you do is put on your most calming music, close your eyes, and wait. Once you're barely awake, slowly open your web browser and go to websites that you hate. When I say hate, I mean the one's that really get you riled up, the ones that make you want to punch walls because of what the people are writing. Then read, remember to do so slowly, and just see how silly it is to get angry over these people. Look at how angry they are in their writing and compare it to your own peaceful state. It's a hell of a lot of fun.

Anyways back to finals work. Wheeeee!

Working Brain + Time = This

I knew I was going to have a unique day when the first thing I see on my computer was this. For the lazy people out there it's an article about a mom who bought her kids a Nintendo DS, which then turned them into cello-ignoring monsters. At first I took this article seriously; here was a situation where a video game system tore a family out of its natural rhythm causing a great amount of distress. However, I began to look deeper into the article and I found some pieces that didn't feel right to me. After a little digging, I found out that the article's writer and subject, Rosie Millard, was exactly the kind of person I hate.

Rosie Millard is a moron.

Now I'm not saying that Rosie Millard lacks any intelligence, that she has not led a successful life, or anything like that. What I am saying, is the Rosie Millard lacks the ability to think ahead, to see potential problems in the future and to plan for them. Mrs. Millard bought a single Nintendo DS for the family to share, that's her, her husband, and her four children (although I really don't think the two year old should be playing anything with a screen). Now this Nintendo DS has twenty games with it, which is a very large number (even bargain bin DS games cost upwards of $10 when not bought from sketchy online sites in Hong Kong). So we have a lot of subjects wanting play time, a large number of games to play, and one game player. What these really means is that you have a very desirable toy with a variety of activities involved (so you don't get bored and do something else, you just pop in a new game) and a whole lot of people who want to play with it.

Let me put this another way. My brother and I, that's two people, fought constantly over who could play the NES and the two games we had for it. Less people, a worse system, less variety, and we still fought.

What was she expecting?

I wouldn't label Mrs. Millard as a moron for just this one offense. No, it would take something far more ridiculous than that. Something grand, something that just seems like common sense, something like this. 45,000 pounds in debt. Not college debt, not house debt. 45,000 pounds of >200 pound haircut debt. Yeah.

As my final piece of evidence, I give you Mrs. Millard's calls to higher authorities on the matter at hand. Mrs. Millard namedrops Dr. Susan Greenfield and Dr. Tanya Byron, the latter a name that many European gamers are very familiar with. Dr. Tanya Byron is the woman behind the "Byron Review", an independent review funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that was looking into the potential dangers that video games and the internet held for children. Before beginning the review, Dr. Byron, a leading child psychologist, aggressively maintained that video games desensitized children to violence. After the review, Dr. Byron has declared herself publicly as an ally and friend of the video game industry.

Then we have Dr. Susan Greenfield, one of Britain's leading neuroscientists who recently began to investigate the impact of video games and internet on the brains of young adults. Dr. Greenfield theorizes that playing video games causes children to forgo identity building, so that in a few years we'll have a large population group that is having identity crisis'.

By the way, I love this article. The way the author describes Dr. Greenfield makes me feel like she's some kind of villain from Batman. My favorite quote from the article has to be this one:

"Her theory goes like this. The more we play games, the less time there is for learning specific facts and working out how those facts relate to each other."

Really? I mean really? So all those puzzles in my games were actually random? That my pressing a button had no correlation with what occurred onscreen? That knowing that my foe was using a fire attack meant that he would most likely be fire immune and would probably take extra damage from an ice spell?

Video Games are literally nothing but finding out facts and how they relate to each other. Even a first-person shooter teaches the player that their enemies will die a lot faster if you shoot them in the head than if you shoot them in the leg.

I'm sorry, but this is really one of the most laughable theories I have heard of in a long time.

Back to my point, Rosie Millard didn't do her research. Mrs. Miller was just looking at the Nintendo DS as a quick fix solution, to occupy her kids time with no repercussions. In essence, she was looking at the system as a magic quiet box that lets you have a few hours without having to deal with her children, and that's not what a video game system is. A video game system is a means of entertainment, like a TV or a book, and just like those two, parents should monitor their children's use with them. You don't want your child reading an inappropriate novel, or watch an adult program, and you don't want them to do either for ever. Every once in a while, you have to shut off the TV, close the book, and go for a romp at the playground.

And that is why Rosie Millard is a moron.

P.S. Dear Rosie Millard, while a video game system such as a Nintendo DS does contain a computer, a computer game usually refers to a video game made for a desktop or laptop personal computer. Handheld and console titles are usually referred to as such, or more commonly as just "video games". In other words, your title makes you look like an ass.

Explanation

No post today or last thursday due to recuperation from final-type things.

Ack!

I completely spaced writing a post for yesterday. I blame evil wizards, or more accurately, the paper I was finishing up since I'm heading to Portland for an emergency dentist appointment today.

Anyways, GTAIV came out yesterday, it looks good and I can't wait for the weekend to come so that I can actually have some time to play my copy (which currently lies unopened). I'll be too busy for the rest of the day for another post, so I'll see you all on Sunday when I might actually have time to think for once in the past three weeks.

Fin

I take back everything bad I ever said about Assassin's Creed's story, because I just saw the last four episodes of Escaflowne.

I was enjoying Escaflowne before, it wasn't exactly genius in the writing department, but it was watchable, but in the last four episodes the writing took a turn for the "amazingly terrible". New plot points and characters are introduced, only to be solved in the next episode. The main character seems to have forgotten everything she has seen and heard up to this point. One of the major plot points is ignored as if it had never occured, and then there's the dialogue, which became cringe-worthy. The real topper though was the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything here, and I don't know how to make a jump, so I can't say my real thoughts, but I can tell you that it is bad. The ending is bad enough that if the rest of the series had been good, and those last four episodes hadn't been terrible, the show would still be terrible. It was bad enough that I wanted to physically harm the writers of the show.

For those of you who don't know me, I really like endings. I like it when things end, and I really like good endings. Good endings can improve a show/game/book's quality in my eyes several fold. On the other side of the coin, a bad ending can ruin a masterpiece. This is probably why I hate most books in the literary canon that everyone seems to love *cough*Hemmingway*cough. I seriously considered not finishing Persona 3 because I was afraid it was going to have a bad ending, and I didn't want to ruin that game.

When I say bad ending I don't mean a sad ending, a depressing ending, or even an ending that isn't an ending at all. A bad ending is one that leaves me not with contentment, excitement, depression, or any other single word feeling. A bad ending leaves me saying, "What the fuck was that!?"

I just don't understand how a writer can get through a series, a game, a book, and keep my interest until the end, and then write at their worst. The end should be when the writer pulls out all of their tricks, and you should be left amazed at what they did. However, I find it is all too common to have endings that just kind of slump over and are done. Even some of my favorite games fall into this category. I loved Dark Cloud 2 to death, but it had one of the worst endings I have come across. I mean really, the final boss didn't even have a unique song!

I wonder if the writers who make bad endings just don't know how to do it. They've been writing for so long, they don't know how to stop. So, rather than taking the time to really think it over and craft a finale, they just stop writing and call it good. Dang, now I'm really curious what the hell the writers and translators of Escaflowne were thinking.

Thank God For GTA (Good design That's Awesome)

First things first, watch this: Bad Design.

This is some of the worst design in a game I have ever seen. On a PC, which the version of Assassin's Creed that the video shows, you want to be able to get in and out of programs at the click of a mouse, and it is an industry standard to have a quit-to-desktop choice from the first time you ask it to quit. This design flaw is pretty bad by itself, but there are other reasons why I find Assassin's Creed a study in bad design.

-Give everyone localized accents except the main character.
-Give your worst voice actor the role of the main character.
-Make your main character an assassin who reveals his secret with five minutes of questioning.
-Make your main character, essentially, emotionless.
-Hide your invisible walls with giant blue clouds that clash horribly with the landscape
-Have a plot that a fifth-grader could have written
-Add a sci-fi twist to that plot that gets revealed in the INTRODUCTION.
-Give players the ability to run up walls, but make it slow and not fun
-Give players the ability to kill anyone, but hurt them for killing most
-Getting hit by a retarded person reveals that you are an assassin
-Running into a wall makes guards attack you
-Use four mission types over and over and over.
-Make a combat-system that doesn't take advantage of the ability to run around like spider-man
-Loading screens every eight seconds.
-Have loading screens for loading screens.

I could go on. Despite all of this, however, Assassin's Creed is pretty fun for a couple of hours, but I'm still glad I didn't buy it myself. What makes Assassin's Creed design hurt me so much, is that all of these things are blatant and easily fixable design flaws (for the most part). Heck, if they got rid the sci-fi twist about half of my complaints would be nullified along with it. Ubisoft had a great premise and I'm excited to see how the sequels turn out.

Also, I've been reading this webcomic all day. I really would love to see more games with the same kind of imagination that this comic has. I take that back, I would really love to see more
people with the same kind of imagination that this comic has.

So Wanna Say, But Really Shouldn't

Alright so I had an absurdly awesome idea for a game today and I really wish I had a development studio at my fingertips so that I could make it. Sadly, I do not have a development studio at my beck-and-call, but I still really like the idea, which is why you won't hear too many details from me (I'm kind of paranoid). Why I think it's a good idea is as follows:

It has a pretty and varied landscape.

It has very few, but extremely unique enemies. Similar in fashion to Shadow of the Colossus there are no enemies besides the few boss fights. This focus on single opponents allows for a lot of depth and detail in each of these enemies, and unlike Shadow of the Colossus, these wouldn't be the same kind of fight over and over with a slightly different puzzle each time. Each of these bosses are very different from one another, and the ways to defeat them are extremely different (think platformer versus fps different, or chess versus freeze-tag).

There's a story based around mystery and interpersonal relationships, like Lost, but I know what the hell is going on (seriously I haven't seen the invisible polar bear/t-rex in ages, where did they go, did they explain that on an episode that I missed?).

A defined area for the game world, as in I already know how much space is necessary and where everything should go. Also includes natural barriers to avoid the "invisible-wall" effect (and no, making the invisible walls visible a la Assassin's Creed does not count).

Online Multiplayer that works gameplay-wise (whether connections could handle it or not is something that I don't know enough to answer).

A gameplay experience that would change every single time.

A game world that continues to run as you play, so a second boss could run into you as you fight the first (though that shouldn't happen unless you've done something really bizarre with the first boss to change his location).

I could go on, but this is a really solid idea I feel (wish I could describe it more, but you'll have to talk to me in person for that, plus I really like it). I think the most interesting thing is how full of an idea it came to me. The gameplay, the world, the story, the characters, all of these came to me at the same time, which never happens. Oh well, if all goes according to plan, expect to see this game within ten years, until then, just try to imagine what I've got cooked up.

-1+2=0!?

Unfortunately it appears that I guessed correctly yesterday. Worry not though, I will be back tomorrow with actual things to say and time with which to say it!

ZZZ...

Spent most of today sleeping to make up for all-nighter and so I can do slightly more than just try to survive the rest of the week.

In other words I completely forgot about a post today. Expect similar results tomorrow unless I somehow manage to crush that 2 hours make-up for every 1 hour lost rule.

I Am Never Writing A Paper On Anything But My Mac Again

So... started the week off by pulling an all-nighter.

Yeah...

The worst part was that it wasn't even because I had that much work to do or I put it off that long, I was just having an absurd number of technical problems. Basically every time I tried to scroll down on my paper, there was a 1/12 chance of the program locking up and requiring me to force quit. I finally walked into class half an hour late because just as I was printing out the final copy my printer ran out of black ink, ran around looking for my spare cartridge that has learned how to become invisible, ran down to the library to print it out there only to find out that they don't support whatever crazy format I had my paper saved as so I had to run back to my room, change all of the black text into red, then run back down to the library so I could three-hole-punch the paper. From there it was a simple walk across the entire campus as the library and field house are at exact opposite ends, and voila, I was done.

All on no sleep.

For a couple hours there I was ready to kill someone with my hat, and I know I scared some people when I burst into the library the second time. So yeah, there's your post for today, not much, but I have to go do my homework for tomorrow.

Sorry

Have to work on a paper for class tomorrow so no post tonight.

To Save The World

Egads, almost completely forgot about a post. Alright so this morning I had to have a surreal poem for my poetry class, and I had come up with a couple, but none that I really liked, but then I had an amazing dream. The dream was just me in space and a god-like voice told me that there were five words that could save the world and that I had to ask my classmates for their definitions, and use the words and the definitions as my surreal poem. I got the words and their definitions, but I'm interested what some of you could come up with for definitions.

The words are as follows:

Bolono - pronounced bo-low-no

Djigane - pronounced G-gain

Udulube - pronounced ooh-do-lube

Bithtwixt - pronounced bith-twixt (as in betwixt)

Hammerfly - pronounced like hammer-fly

So just add any definitions you come up with to the comments section and have fun, it's not like the fate of the world rests on this.

Apology

I apologize to all those who have never played a Zelda game before, in my last rant I wasn't intending to talk to you, this review was for people who have played other games in the series. If you want a review of the game for non-gamers just read my first sentence.

Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a good game, and if you have a Wii or Gamecube and enjoy Zelda games I can only recommend its purchase. Please understand that this statement is true, no matter what I say from this point onwards.

#1. I hated playing Twilight Princess.

Twilight Princess was the first Legend of Zelda (LoZ) title that I have played for the purpose of "finding out what comes next." A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, these three titles I spent more time just dicking around and having fun than following the story. Heck, I never even got around to beating Wind Waker. I played these titles for fun, and that was it. I didn't give a second thought to the story.

Twilight Princess was the exact opposite. I would get frustrated and angry when solving a puzzle took too long. I blazed my way through Twilight Princess, there was no five minute breaks to go hop over that fence or half-day detours to see if I can jump from from the top of the fire temple and land at the entrance (something I have done more than once in Ocarina of Time). I entered a temple, and within two hours, finished it. I did not toy with bosses, because I thought they looked cool or they were fun to fight, I decimated them, because Link had to save the princess.

Twilight Princess takes the Zelda series into a whole new world. The characterization and story, while not top-tier, are amazing and unheard of in the series. Link has a life before you come in, Hyrule is a world that continues to live and breath after you leave. These are great things, but they did make me feel a bit like a visitor. I felt more like a wanderer who just happens to brush through town when things are a little hairy. I saved the day, and then I leave, and not one person knows my name.

Notice that I have been making a distinction between myself (the player) and Link. While Link is, as he always has been, silent, through his expressions he conveyed much more of a character in Twilight Princess than we've seen before; and through the interactions with his friends, I got to learn a bit about who he was. We both wanted to save Hyrule and Zelda, but he was going to stay and live in that world, while I would leave for another land. I have never felt this kind of separation in a Zelda game before. Not that I hated it, on the contrary it made the world a lot less lonely (unlike, say, Metroid Prime), but if I was already feeling this separation, then they may as well have given Link a voice. Of course, link wasn't the only one to help the world feel less lonely, Midna was there as well.

Midna was, a genius idea. Take Navi, make her useful, then make her sneaky and self-centered, and you've got a bit of what Midna is like. Midna is, by far, the most complex and fleshed-out character in Twilight Princess, and she's also the only one with you the entire time (almost). Midna has her own desires, her own goals, and, contrary to her role, she often makes Link figure things out for himself rather than just give him the answer. The result is a companion that you can really bond too, and perhaps the greatest achievement of Twilight Princess. Every game could gain by following her example.

Gameplay is standard Zelda fare, if you've played Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, then you've played Twilight Princess, except maybe a little more fun. Twilight Princess adds the ability to turn into a wolf for certain sections, and while this does help break up the monotony, the gameplay in the Zelda series is fun enough that it really wasn't necessary.

Honestly I hated the wolf thing, I didn't like the way it played, and I hated how all of the wolf sections were exactly the same (since the wolf never got any new skills, the puzzles for it never changed). The worst part about it was that you couldn't ride horseback when you were a wolf, and the horseback riding/fighting in Twilight Princess were, far and away, the funnest sections of the game. I can't say anything without having spoilers, but just know that all of the fights on horseback were amazing and that there should have been more of them.

All in all Twilight Princess is much like the time of day it focuses on, twilight. It's a liminal space, not quite day, not quite night, and Twilight Princess is a liminal game, not quite amazing, but not quite average. The story is a good step forward, Midna is a very good step forward, but the wolf sections are two steps backwards. I love what Twilight Princess means for the future of the series, but by itself it pales in comparison to its predecessors.

Also when the fuck are we going to learn what's up with Ganondorf, I mean the guy is essentially immortal (it's the same guy in every game, whereas Zelda and Link are "reincarnations"), yet all he wants to do is conquer Hyrule, he's got to have something more behind him than just that. I want to hear his story.

Edit: Shit! I forgot about the music! It was nice, standard fare, Midna's song was quite good (it's the song that plays after you beat a boss), but other than that they only time I noticed the music was when it was playing remixes of Ocarina of Time songs (which isn't a good sign). Also the wolf howling sections can bite my ass. Seriously, whoever thought those up must have been deaf, because changing the pitches of wolf howls does not equal an actual instrument. My ears bled from those sections.

Egads And Then Some!

Completely lost track of time today, however in some slight form of apology I will be posting my review/rant of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess tomorrow without fail (barring extreme things: death of family member, vomiting, battle to save mankind as we know it...).

I Just Don't Have Anything To Rant About

I just can't think of a darned thing to say. I'm pretty excited about Grand Theft Auto IV, mainly because I don't own any of the the III's (GTAIII, Vice City, and San Andreas) myself and I don't have a game that I can just pop in when my brain isn't working and just blow-shit up.

Yeah, that's about it. I'm going to blame poetry class for sucking all of the creativity out of me today. Also, I need to hear something stupid happening so I can rant about it, the world's been too intelligent as of late.

Coffee would also help.

Honestly How Do You Forget Who You Are?

I know that last week I said that I would post my review/thoughts on Zelda: Twilight Princess, but I won't be doing it until I can devote a single post to it. I am unable to devote this post to Twilight Princess, because yesterday I had something.

For the past couple of days I've been feeling pretty crappy, and all of my roommates going out and having fun outside the suite didn't help me feel any less crappy (I, feeling crappy, didn't want to leave the room). Saturday was an interesting day. The day started off beautifully, it must have been 75 degrees outside, sunny, just perfect, a day in a thousand in Tacoma (at least during the Fall, Winter, and Spring that I'm here for). Everyone was outside having fun, but because I was feeling crappy and down on myself, I locked myself in the suite (Also it was parent's weekend and for some reason I get angry when I see students taking their parents around campus, I don't really know why). Finally, a little before sunset I stopped moping, slapped myself a couple of times, and just kind of woke up. I mean, it was a perfect day, and I had spent most of it inside feeling lonely (because everyone was outside!).

I took a nice, meandering walk that confused a number of parents (My favorite quote was, [woman] "Why did that man just walk in a circle?" [man] "Nobody knows why crazy people do things, that's why they're crazy." and just enjoyed myself. I watched the sun set, and just had a great experience remembering who I am, and that I could go and do things by myself.

It seems odd that I would have forgotten those two things, or the fact that I prefer to walk next to sidewalks rather than on them, but I really had forgotten. So much of my time up here I spend trying to shape myself for the future. I change how I write and what I write about to please my professors so that they give me better grades, I change what things I enjoy to please my friends. I expand my horizons, but I begin to forget who I am. The pressure to conform into a certain type of person in college is amazingly high (just ask any conservatives at Lewis and Clark), and trying to prepare myself for my future career left me too amorphous for my own good. Even this site doesn't always hold my true feelings, I pander to an audience that doesn't even exist.

It's good in a way, that I can change like this. That I can predict what people want of me, what they want out of my writing. It means that I can adapt to a market and be successful as a businessman, but every once in a while I have to get back to who I am.

Best walk I've had in years.

Doug the Dork

Just gonna be a short post tonight as I'm going to go celebrate my roommates 21st birthday.

I got around to reading a video game review (Dark Sector) from the Oregonian that my mom printed out. Within the first two paragraphs I had already spotted something that the reviewer got wrong, and I haven't even played the game (actually I din't think it's out to the public yet, but I could be wrong). It wasn't even what he got wrong about the game, or the fact that he gave such a mediocre game a grade of B+, but his writing was terrible.

Worse than this, however, was the terms used for this review. The column is known as Game Dork: Tales from joystick land (really legitimizes the article don't you think), but really Elfman manages to alienate both gamers (from his lack of knowledge and language choice) and non-gamers (He uses a specialized vocabulary and assumes the reader knows how games flow). I understand that as a newspaper column he doesn't have a lot of space to work with, but he should at least told us why the game deserved a B+ and whether certain things (such as enemies being hard or puzzles being difficult) were pros or cons.

Worst of all is that this column (Game Dork), is printed in newspapers coast to coast. It's clear from this article that Doug Elfman hasn't played very many games, which makes me wonder how he can review them. The guy isn't a gamer, he doesn't have the experience, and he doesn't have the talent. But, since he made a name as a music, film, and television critic, he's become the voice on games for the non-gaming public. And here I wondered why people are so misinformed.

Thanks Doug Elfman, can I have your job?

[Can't Think Of A Title]

No post again; like I said yesterday, super busy. Also, it really doesn't help when I spend a large part of the day sleeping to make up for having to get up at seven in the morning to take a test. I need to sleep now so I don't skip class tomorrow, goodnight.

Eep!

So I lied, no thoughts on Twilight Princess today (yesterday really). All I can say is busy, busy, busy. Don't expect it tomorrow or Thursday either as the rest of my week is pretty well booked. School's been getting a lot more rigorous since Spring Break and I've been doing nothing but getting sleepier and sleepier. No more post for tonight as I have to be up in 5 hours and 13 minutes.

Simply Amazing

Today was an amazing day that started off super-shitty, but first, the backstory.

About two years ago I was at a pizza place in Chicago the night before me and my family were going to fly to Europe for vacation. My mom told me to go wash my hands, and as I exuberantly jumped out of the booth, my left foot got caught on the table leg. This resulted in me nearly wrenching my leg out of the hip socket. It hurt pretty bad, but in less than five minutes I couldn't feel a thing. The next day I woke up to find out that I couldn't get out of bed because my hip hurt so bad. Despite this injury I went to Europe and for nearly a month, walked around on this bad hip, finally getting some chiropractic help when I got back. My walking on the bad hip caused me to walk oddly and that led to some lower back problems, but thanks to my amazing chiropractor, I felt like new before I even had to go back to school. The bad part though was that his fix didn't seem to be perfect, and I still had to go back every three months or so and get readjusted, and if I got sick and started to feel achy, my hip would start to act up.

Phew, now you're caught up.


So last week, just before the weekend, I got pretty sick (thus the non-post Thursday) and my hip took it as the perfect opportunity to start acting up. After I recovered (Sunday or so) my hip stopped bugging me so much, but at 5 this morning I woke up in complete agony. My hip decided that I had spent too much time in my bed over the weekend and so it would start spasming a lot if I stayed in bed. For the next three hours I rotated between walking in circles in the common area and trying to fall asleep through the pain.

At about 8 I feel back asleep, but I had to get up at 10 for an appointment to get my ears checked as for the past couple of weeks I haven't really been able to hear in my right one
(I'm really breaking apart aren't I?). I felt pretty shitty from the disturbed sleep and my hip still ached, but in less than fifteen minutes I was done with the visit and had a completely functional auditory system once again. I got some breakfast real quick and then headed back to bed since I didn't have class until 1 (yes it is amazing) and proceeded to have one of the best dreams I have had in several years. This dream was amazing, it was probably the happiest dream I've ever had, and throughout the entire thing I was in an absurdly good mood.

Thanks to my dream, being able to hear, and my hip no longer hurting, I woke up feeling like a brand new man. I proceeded to crush through my homework and then went on to finish Twilight Princess (Thoughts on that tomorrow) before the day was done.

Man I haven't rambled like this in forever, and it's probably rife with errors, but I really needed to just vent this day out like this. It's just been too good of a day to proof-read.

Is It Awkward I Feel Like Julian of Norwich?

I had what I would call a "revelatory" moment today as I was deciding what classes to take next semester. I was writing down all of the courses that looked interesting to me and after I finished I realized that over half of the courses were, in some way, related to violence. This immediately prompted a memory of when I was in fifth grade and my mother was yelling at me for writing a terribly violent story for class after she had specifically forbid me from writing about violence.

This made me wonder what it was about violence that so intrigued me. I'm not particularly enamored with the idea really, and in games like Neverwinter Nights 2 I usually choose the diplomatic solution. Yet I am continuously drawn to read and write about violence.

Then I started thinking about the video game industry; how the media covers stories on how violent games are and how they increase violent tendencies in children who play them. I started thinking about how I was one of these children. I played video games, watched violent movies. I imagined how disturbing it must have been to have looked at the fifth-grade child who wrote this disgustingly violent story.

All of this led to me thinking about how violence is used in video games, how it's the only solution. Even in games where you can talk your way out of hostile situations (Fallout 1+2, Neverwinter Nights 1+2, etc...), there are always times where you are forced to fight with no alternative. When I realized this my mind hit some special place and, for a moment at least, I saw a different kind of violence. I saw a game in mind where fighting didn't always end with a specific winner, where losing didn't mean the end of the game, where people could even fight for fun like my roommate when he does Jujitsu with his friend. It's hard to describe, but I felt like all of my life, all of my interest in violence, that it's all leading to one big thing, one big story that's my purpose in life to tell.

It looks pretty pompous when I put it down in writing, but between this and something else, I think I might really be onto something big.

P.S. I'm pretty sure that story was about me fighting zombies on an airplane. Also, I spent that summer stuck in my room with only the books in my bookcase to keep me company and I don't think anything helped me grow as a person more than that summer.

I Feel Like A Zombie

Not feeling well, my brain is especially foggy and I have to study for a test tomorrow, so no post tonight.

Got Ya!

So I got a few more of you guys with that last post than I thought I would, so here's a quick refresher.

This is something that I have decided in heart to do, and I won't stop until the day I die. I may forget to update, I may get sick and take a break, but I will never give up writing.

I've noticed ever since I got from spring break I've been writing much shorter posts, I can blame some of it to school stepping up as it usually does after midterms, but the two largest factors are really that I'm finally working on a module that I like, and that the sun has been out.

Usually when I write these posts the sun has already set or it's rainy or overcast, lately it's been very nice out. What this means is that I'm out having fun or enjoying the sun, because I'm like some kind of plant-man that needs eight hours of sun a day or something. Honestly, when I'm in the sun my mood improves dramatically, and I don't want to be tied to a computer when there are people I can talk to and be excited with just outside my door.

Okay, I lied, there's another reason as well. Ever since Michael Abbott did his series on the Legend of Zelda series (Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) I've desperately wanted to play Twilight Princess, and lucky for me my roommate recently brought his copy up to Tacoma. Since it's not mine and I only have a limited amount of time to play it, as I only have about another month of school where I'm roommates with this guy, I've been feeling somewhat rushed. In response I've been bull rushing the game when I'm not doing homework or working on my module, which used to be my nap and work on my post time. I'll give you my impressions when I finish, but I really can't recommend Michael Abbott's series enough (or his site The Brainy Gamer) it says everything that I'm going to say at an unparalleled level of eloquence.

If you enjoy Michael Abbott's series on Zelda, then you'll most likely enjoy Leigh Alexander's series on Final Fantasy VII (Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).