miffy495

I still really like The Dig. Nuts to all the people who treat it as the bastard child of the LucasArts adventure family. This afternoon I finished finished Just Cause 2. I was tooling around the map and found one last faction mission I'd left undone. I now have the "did all faction missions" achievement, so I decided that at 43%, it was time to uninstall it. It felt a bit sad, but it made room for Splinter Cell Conviction (purchased in the recent Steam sale) so it seems like the right choice. Plus now I won't be tempted to fire it up again just for the hell of it.

Yeah, we had an interesting time raiding a few hideouts. It was kinda fun, but I don't see it replacing GTA anytime soon. Good way to kill an hour when noone was signed in for Forza though.

Sweeny Todd and Big Fish are actually the only recent Burton movies I've liked. I agree about his other stuff, but I'd still suggest giving those two a chance.

Tempest 2000. It's classic. Play the damn thing.

Cheers to you! From what I've gathered, a happy 30th is in order!

Dude, Wrestle, wait until you get to the end. The game just gets more and more awesome. Every level is something different and sweet.

Give a man a meme, and he will laugh for a minute. Teach a man to meme, and he will laugh for a lifetime.

I went and saw Kick Ass on Monday and really loved it. It was a lot of fun, with great action bits and some really funny stuff as a bonus. To James and Rodi, I can only say that the little girl killing people only bothered me a little bit. It was weird at first, but as soon as I remembered that I'd seen other characters doing much worse in other films and it hadn't fazed me, I let myself go with it. It was wrong, sure, and the fact that she was 11 made it a bit more wrong, but it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to have a problem with it considering some of the films in my collection. I kind of liked that they only pointed it out once in the "you owe her a childhood" scene and left the rest to the audience, assuming that they were smart enough to realize that what Nic Cage did was pretty horrible and not sermonizing us. Also, Nic Cage's character in general was pretty sweet. Actually, that was the only problem I had with it. Everything happened just a bit too easily. The only character with a really believable motivation for what they're doing was Cage's. Still, complaining about a lack of character depth in what is essentially a summer popcorn flick is a pretty minor thing to worry about.

I doubt it. If it hadn't been lent to me, I probably wouldn't have played the PS3 version in the first place. Honestly, in the early stages of the game (first 2 or 3 hours) when everything still felt like cutting-room-floor material from SoT, I was mostly thinking "Man, I have a copy of Red Dead Redemption sitting RIGHT. THERE." Then it got its hooks into me and I really started liking it. Regardless, the point is that I have so much on my gaming plate right now (currently have a stack of "in progress" that includes 3D Dot Game Heroes, ODST, Brutal Legend, and will soon add RDR) that without the chance to play it for free, I would not have touched Forgotten Sands. New things keep coming out that I want to play, there's stuff from last year I haven't had a chance to look at right now, I really want to buy Alan Wake, and more stuff is coming as soon as next week. Ugh. Too much quality gaming, man. Just too much. Unless it also gets handed to me for free, probably not going to play the Wii version.

This was brought up last time someone tired something like this, but: why? Doesn't cataloging and listing all this stuff kinda suck the fun out of it?

And done. For those interested in time, it took me between 7 and 8 hours over three sittings. For those interested in how long a game feels, just right. The platforming got crazy right at the end, just as it should, and the ascent of the final tower got at least two or three cries of "Seriously? Fuck..." out of me. The use of water and platforms that you could conjure (but only one at a time) really sold me on this game existing. It's actually its own thing, and stands as a very good entry in the franchise, so well done to the team behind it. I liked it far more than I expected to going in. As for the endgame itself, it was sort of hit and miss. There was an admittedly very simply but nonetheless exhilarating platforming sequence (hit) followed by a boss fight that feels like it was rejected from one of the recent Zelda games (miss). Not that I ever expect games to have good boss fights anymore, but it still stings a bit every time my suspicions are confirmed. I died a few times. Only once because of the combat (there were enemies I could only damage with heavy attacks and I used said attacks so infrequently I'd forgotten I could do them. For the longest time I thought they were invulnerable through some glitch). Most of the time it was the traps and my running dangerously low on rewind power. I like that a lot, by the way. Kept the tension up, and made me genuinely relieved when I did something awesome. The only cheap thing I found were the damn birds. Not in the way they were cheap in Sands of Time either. In this game, the birds are basically floating grapple points. You throw yourself from one to the next using some magic flying power that the Djinn gives you and they just float there waiting for it to happen, never attacking. Once I started a chain of them, I never had any issues, but starting one was only registered half the time by the game. I'd jump and hit circle to start, but nothing would happen and I'd fall to my death. Rewind and do the exact same thing, pull it off no problem. Stupid game not listening to what I tell it. The level design was gorgeous, particularly the gardens. The only disappointment was the . I kinda had hoped that a place that had been would look more like the area where you go to get your new powers (the same area where you upgraded your life bar in SoT, I think) rather than like every other damn ruin in the game. You had a great opportunity to make an amazing level there, Ubisoft, why would you not take it? Regardless, I recommend this game to those who want some more PoP in their life. I never played Two Thrones, but compared to the other three modern PoP games, I'd rank this one second, behind SoT and ahead of PoP2008. It loses some points for unoriginality, but comes up strong in level design, interesting mechanics, and keeping the tension up all the way through. I think this can be counted next to Riddick as a game released alongside a movie that I would be proud to recommend regardless of a person's opinion of the film in question. Hell, I haven't seen the film, but the game was great fun.

Just a quick update of more impressions. They've now started doing some really creative stuff with the water powers. I quite like it. My opinion of the game is improving, as it seems to be making more of a case for its existence beyond "you guys liked the old ones, right?" Still feels a little weird, and I wouldn't pay the $70 that the stores are asking for it, but I am really enjoying my time with it.

Dude brought it in to the shift we had together tonight, so rather than digging into my fresh (oh so fresh) copy of Red Dead Redemption, I played 3 hours of Forgotten Sands tonight. I feel sort of obligated to complete the game and get it back to him before playing anything else, dig? Anyway, my initial thoughts: I'm so fucking conflicted over this game. On the one hand, I said (and believe posted) about Assassin's Creed 2 that the Assassin Tombs were exactly what I wanted a modern Prince of Persia game to be, and it really seems like they tried to do that with this game. I like the design, I like the flow of platforming, I'm enjoying the combat, and it's great to have manual control over when something gets rewound or not (choosing whether that bit of damage you took from a swinging axe is worth expending the time resource actually feels like a real decision, for example). Taken piece by piece, this should be one goddamned amazing game. But when it all comes together, something about the overall feel is off. It's the little things. The camera swinging an unintuitive way when I poke the right stick. The breaking of flow in order to swing the camera around to an opened gate when I swing to a bar that doubles as a switch. The over-reliance on the R2 button (I'm on PS3, by the way) for traversal rather than putting in some slightly more precise controls. All these little things and others like them begin to combine to give a very distinct feeling. This game should have been made in 2003. And it was. And it was just a little bit better then. I like playing with the new pretty graphics of course, but that's about all that has changed. What I'm playing right now is Sands of Time, but given that weird glossiness that seems to come with HD and taking a bit of the colour out of it. Not that comparing this game to Sands of Time is bad by any means. I absolutely love that game. The problem is that this game doesn't feel like a sequel, it feels like a remake. Or reboot. Whatever the kids are saying these days. A remake where all that has changed is the graphics. The mechanics, as much as I love Sands of Time, are dated now. I can still go back and play SoT, getting myself in that mindset is easy. I played it back then and I know what to expect. I guess I just expected something a bit more progressive. I really like this game actually, it just feels hollow in weird ways. So yeah, I like it, but it feels off. A part of me wishes they hadn't done this and had instead made a sequel to PoP2008. Much as that game frustrated me with its simplicity and telegraphing of solutions, I felt that there was a lot of potential in there. There's a lot of potential in this design too, but it's the same potential that has gone unimproved upon for about 7 years now. Seeing what was done between AC1 and AC2, I'd like to see how PoP2008 could be built upon and maybe leave this prince to memory. Forgotten Sands is a better game to send him off with than Two Thrones was, but I kinda hope this is his final encore. ADDENDUM: Of course, I've also heard that the game gets incredibly creative with its use of water puzzles later on, so maybe I just haven't seen the brilliant parts yet. Keep in mind, this is only 3 hours in.

Having just replayed Season 1 and 2 (well, ok, I've got "What's New Beelzebub?" minimized while I type this, but mostly done.) and played 301 and 302 the day they each came out, yes. The old ones are still great, the only thing that's really aged is the graphics. The puzzle design in them is classic adventure game, which hasn't really seemed to grow much at all until Season 3 anyway, so roll with it. If you like older adventure games, play season 1 and 2 to see a perfect way to remind you why you like them, then start season 3 for what (if the quality from the first two episodes keeps up through the next three) is starting to look like an honest to god renaissance for them.

Whoo! My copy arrived today! I intend to start on the single player tonight and if there's a future game I can make I'll be in.

No, but through the wonderful powers of alchemy, you can turn a fake WoW rolex into a wedding dress made of gold.

Years of posting, and finally our purpose is revealed. Standard deviation solving!

Happy birthday Ben!

I swear I remember recent Telltale games actually doing this when you hit tab? I may be mistaken, as I don't really use the feature anyway, but give it a try next time you fire one up. Maybe even from Wallace and Gromit on? That may be too far back though.

Grand Thumb Auto can never truly die. I thought this was a one-time proposal, anyway? With further scheduling to be worked out later?

Important detail: The guy is John Cusack. Doesn't make the movie any better, but I feel it should be said.

I'd be in, but I don't think I'll be available for Tuesday afternoons for the next few weeks either way. Oh well.

I find bringing laptops to class to be irritating and disrespectful, honestly. A recording device I get, but every single time I've seen someone use a laptop during a class, they're on Facebook or chatting or some other shit. It's not like the professors don't know it, either. I was talking to my supervisor once and he said that he cringed every time a computer came out because he knew that it meant one less student actually engaging with the class. As such, though I brought my laptop to school with me, I only ever used it between classes. During class, handwritten notes all the way. With a fountain pen for extra classiness. There were a couple of times my pen was out of ink and I took notes in my word processor, but I tried extra hard to be involved in the class those times just so that I didn't come off as just another asshole idly surfing the web during class time. I can see how bringing a computer to class could be useful in classes that actually need you to use them, media arts and programming classes and such, but I made it a personal rule that for my philosophy degree my computer stayed in my bag. English, psych, and other such things should probably follow suit as well. The worst offender was in an anthropology course I took as a breadth option when the people in front of me spent a class watching the entire Black Sheep DVD. Why the hell are you even showing up?

If you can get over Brad being spectacularly bad at killing that ceiling crawler lady, then yeah. I was actually yelling at my computer last night "STOP TRYING TO MELEE HER, GODDAMNIT!"

Just Cause 2. Favorite game so far this year, aside from the new Sam and Max stuff.