miffy495

Dual Strike or whatever the new one is called? Played and loved Advance Wars: DS and should probably get the new one, but honestly the DS hasn't been getting that much love lately. I don't know how that came to be, exactly. All I know is that over the last two months or so if I'm taking a portable with me, it's been the PSP and I can't quite work out why.

Brain disorder? I dunno... Truthfully, though I have downloaded Night of the Raving Dead, I have not yet played it. I had a night to myself yesterday, but instead opted to go through the opening two chapters of No More Heroes. In my defense, whenever I start playing a Sam and Max game, I usually don't stand up again until it's been finished, and I wanted to make sure I got some sleep last night. When Moai Better Blues came out I was up until 5 that morning to see the credits. I think Sam and Max should be something that I do when I have a full afternoon to myself. Luckily, it's reading week now, so I should be ok for it. If it's a general comment on the games themselves, you may be starting to get the vibe, as I know I am, that the puzzles are getting a bit too "glue on the fence to get a cat hair mustache" for your tastes. Season 1 only had a couple of moments when I thought "Oh come on!" while the first two episodes of Season 2 have already had more than all of the first. A little frustrating, but the writing and acting is as sharp as ever, so I'm sticking with it for the foreseeable future. I will say that while I essentially camped out in front of my PC waiting for each episode of Season 1 to go live, I have not had the same reaction to the current episodes. I may just have more of a life now, or it may be something else. Yes, I know I italicized Raving Dead and used bold for Heroes. I figure since one is episodic and the overall title would be Sam and Max: Season 2 that I should use bold for full titles and italics for episodes

Seconded.

Just gonna throw this out there now. There Will Be Blood. Fantastic. Holy fuck fantastic.

That's pretty much exactly why I'll still load it up today. Grab me a Freeway motorcycle, hit the back roads of the island that Las Venturas is on, and turn up Dust. Good times, great feeling.

Ah, then I see what you mean. Still, as I said earlier, I never played the earlier ones for more than a few minutes given that their controls made it impossible for me to enjoy the games. I'd blow a few things up, get frustrated that I couldn't even walk straight, let along lead the cops on a high-speed chase, and stop playing. If they're made the controls camera-relative rather than player-relative, or at least given you the option to switch, I probably would have had infinitely more fun with GTA and GTA2. As it stands though, I never got into GTA until I saw III running at a friend's house on his PC back when I was an impressionable whelp of 14. I didn't realize it actually had a story until I got older and actually started to look for engaging narratives in my games, but it satisfied completely then too. What a difference 6-ish years makes. Anyway, the point of this was to say that I was weaned on the 3D GTAs and as such have great affection for them. And I think it's entirely enjoyable and rewarding to do as you describe in them. For the first year I had GTAIII, all I did was keep on raising my wanted level and pulling of ridiculous rampages. When I started bothering to unlock islands, I spent days mastering the art of flying the Dodo. Very, very fun stuff. Even if I had to use cheat codes to spawn a tank because you can't get your wanted level above 4 stars on the first island.

No, I don't find it too serious at all. The story itself is played seriously for the most part, and it's all the better for it, but when you want to go on a simple rampage I find it more funny than anything else. I think San Andreas really took it to extremes. Flying around with a Thunderball-esque jetpack while laying waste to area 51 is too serious for you? Really? And that's one of the main story missions! If you're just left to your own devices, things can get even more ridiculous. I personally enjoyed participating in street gang turf wars using a harrier jet instead of a gun. Good, wholesome fun.

You know you can still do all that in the latest ones, right? Seeing a huge crowd of Elvis impersonators gathering on the Las Venturas strip is very common while playing San Andreas. Just saying...

Hey, I've gotten so used to not having them by now that the fact that I'll be using one again weirds me out a little. Of course, as I'm currently playing Vice City Stories whenever I get the chance (finally beat that mission that had had me stuck for a week about an hour ago! YES!) I'm still kind of in that good old GTA mindset. Actually, the main reason for me picking VCS up again after having ignored the PSP for ages is that I wanted to be fully caught up on my GTA before IV hits. Never know what kind of reference they're going to make, and I always like to be in on the joke with games like this. Don't get why VCS gets looked at as the black sheep of the GTA series. While SA was arguably the better game than VC, Vice is still my favorite location from GTA. Returning to the city with the voice acting nearly the same quality (given that I doubt VC will be equaled for quite some time, that's a hell of an achievement), a solid story, and remarkably well done controls given the limited layout of the PSP (flying a helicopter is, if anything, smoother than the other GTAs made it) put the game on even footing with its big brothers, I think. Personally, I'd probably rate them SA, VC, VCS, GTAIII, LCS. And I love Liberty City Stories, so there you have it. Anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to try the Stories spin offs, I highly recommend them. I'm fairly sure you can get both for PS2 now, so they shouldn't be so hard to find. They're both fantastic for giving context to a lot of the characters you meet in the original PS2 games. Particularly in LCS if you're at all interested in the character of Donald Love. He's huge in that game.

We've all got one. That giant stack of games that we started and really liked but for some reason or other never bothered to finish. Today, I had the day to myself with not a whole lot to do, so I did what I'd been telling myself I would since September. Sat down and finally beat Bioshock. Aside from the 11 achievements, I also earned a very nice sense of closure on the game. The "saved all the little sisters" ending was lame as all hell, but at least I can now say I've seen it. I now feel a bit inspired to go on and finish a bunch more games that I loved but simply haven't gotten around to completing yet. Off the top of my head, I'll list off: - Dead Rising (got into the Overtime mode thing, but never finished the final chapter) - Earth Defense Force 2017 (actually one of my favorite games of the year, but still haven't seen the last few levels) - Metal Gear Ac!d 2 (as I seem to be one of the few people on this planet that really like that series) - Metroid Prime: Corruption (got put aside for Guitar Hero III, then Mario Galaxy came out and it left my Wii indefinitely) Not a bad start, and I'm sure there are a bunch more. RE4 Wii and Okami, for example, but both of those I wasn't close to finishing when I got pulled away, so I'm less likely to finish them than those on the above list. Anyway, I'm wondering what would be on the list for other thumbs. Who never finished what and really kinda wants to?

Pretty much exactly my dilemma. Getting pretty close to the end of Metroid Prime: Corruption now, I think. I've been finding energy cells as I go and have 8 of 9 of them. Is that enough to beat the game or do you need them all? I should be able to wrap up and hopefully a few hours of whatever comes after that tomorrow night. Who knew that having to wait a month for a cheque to clear would be so good for gaming?

Oh god that's a brilliant picture. Love it so much.

I have to say, after reading previews, I'm a little bit disappointed in the fact that there's going to be a health bar again. It sounds like they've really nailed the combat in this one, I've been hearing comparisons to Uncharted and Gears of War, but a big part of those two was the fact that you could take a few shots while taking aim out from cover. Not a lot, but enough that you could line up a nice headshot or something. I'm not sure how well that would work without rebounding health given that every time you go to take aim you would get a little more of your bar taken away. It's not like I'd expect to be able to survive a long extended firefight in real life, but on the other hand I died a bunch in Gears and Uncharted too. Oh well, everything else looks brilliant. I guess I'll just have to see what happens.

Holy shit, I can't believe something like that was ever brought in in the first place. I'm 20 and go to school full time. I also work nights. Does this mean that when trying to go home after a shift which ends at midnight I would be assaulted by shrill whistles just for walking through certain blocks? Who the hell thought this was ever a good idea? Of course, given my city's political climate, I should just be glad that they're isolated enough to not be trying to put these in around here.

Actually, the theater I work for recently changed hands. It's a 12 story skyscraper with the bottom two floors occupied by a cinema on each. At 56 years, it's the second oldest cinema in the city and the oldest building over 10 stories, but everything has been kept up to date and the films look and sound fantastic. The top floor is a beautiful penthouse that looks over Calgary's downtown. The floors in between are commonly leased out as offices given our downtown location. Final sale price: 3 million dollars, Canadian. So yeah, you could have a full theater (two screens) with completely up to date projection equipment and live in a wonderful penthouse in the same building for about half that price. On a completely unrelated note, when I first saw a picture of the set-up, I started picturing the type of people who would go ape-shit over it. I am so glad I kept on scrolling down and eventually discovered that I was completely right.

I also am a huge fan of the GTA series. I'll confess that the 2d ones never really grabbed me. Good as I can see they are, the controls are infuriating for me. The 3d however, are brilliant, and the stories always seem to grab me. The only one I haven't completed is Vice City Stories on the PSP, and even that I'm working on at the moment on slow shifts at work. There's one mission I'm stuck on about three quarter of the way through the game, but I'll crack it sooner or later.

Only half joking. My Father's, Brother's, Niece's and my own birthdays all fall between December 10th and 30th. Large family parties were commonplace before we all started to move away from each other. ...and yeah, the niece is that brother's daughter, so it's all pretty close.

Actually, I'm working on Vice City Stories as well right now. Closing shifts at work usually involve two hours where there's nothing to do but wait for a movie to end so I can lock the doors. Good time for some PSP gaming.

yeah, I doubt I'll ever get the good ending myself.

Well, in fairness, a part of my negative reaction is probably due to the fact that it's getting such high accolades (and even a best picture nomination!?!?) that I don't think it really deserves. As I said, it was a good movie, and many aspects of it were spot on. Ellen Page is a fantastic actress (see Hard Candy for more awesome) and everyone in it did very well. It was cute, it was fun. It was nowhere near the best picture I've seen this year. I went into it with such high expectations and was thoroughly disappointed. I'd recommend that everyone go see it, but don't get your hopes as high as I did. It's good, but it's not that good. Also, the girl and I have decided that our valentine's outing will be to There Will Be Blood. Can't wait to see this movie. The benefits of dating a cinema geek are becoming very clear to me.

My backlog was on the verge of having a life of its own, so I figured it was time to put a stop to it before I needed to start feeding and caring for it. On that note, I still do have two games that I want to finish before I move on, both on Wii. I think I'll be putting some time into Zack and Wiki today before I leave for my soccer game, and then Metroid Prime 3 when I have time over the next week or so. This won't clear out the backlog completely by any means, but I will have gotten through all of the major 2007 releases that I wanted to play, so that's way better than nothing.

Oddly, I'm kind of in the opposite position of Marek and Thunderpeel on Juno and Eagle vs Shark. I really liked Eagle, I thought it was cute and funny. Nothing spectacular, but a really sweet little movie. Juno on the other hand was trying so bloody hard to make itself fit in with the hipster teen crowd that it completely lost me. The acting was good, the plot was solid, and it had a few genuinely great moments, but it all seemed lost in a sea of references to bands and movies that made the movie feel like it was trying very hard to alienate itself from a larger audience. The fact that I know these bands and movies is supposed to make me like the movie more and let me identify, I think, but really it just made me feel like I was being pandered to and I got a little turned away by it.

Hooray for progress! It's been something of a banner week for clearing out games I've been meaning to complete. Tuesday: Uncharted, Wednesday: Super Mario Galaxy, Thursday: Mass Effect, Friday: went out, Saturday: Assassin's Creed. Holy crap it feels good to get all those done. Not that playing them wasn't a pleasure, they were all very good games, it's just that I was sick of having them hanging over my head. It had gotten to the point where though I really want to buy No More Heroes, I just couldn't justify it while I still had all that to play. Now the only problem is that I still can't get No More Heroes until I get paid on Friday. And that whole school thing I guess. Papers coming due over the next few weeks. Maybe I should wait until Reading Week. Oh well, getting sidetracked. The point here was celebration! Not only have I taken 4 big name (and very well received) games off the backlog, but my gamerscore on XBL has skyrocketed as a result. One more thing that I did tonight was beat the hall of fame induction in the Band World Tour on Rock Band with my roommates. Two playing on Expert, two on Medium. I don't know if that should really count, as I will definitely keep playing Rock Band, but it is a fifth set of credits I've watched roll. One last side note: What the hell was up with the end of Assassin's Creed? Weird boss fight aside, that's about as extreme example of a cliffhanger as I can imagine. How long was that game in development? Cliffhangers only on episodic games, please. If I'm not going to be able to find out how the story ends in a few months, wrap up enough that it's not just frustrating. Loose ends in the story are expected. Always want to leave room for a sequel. This one was like the ending from HL2 episode 2 happening with no announcement or certainty of HL2 episode 3. Dammit, I want some narrative resolution here!

Damn, that's a bit expensive but sounds really cool. I may have to look into that.

From what I've seen of that one, isn't it for Japanese people to learn English? Wrong way, I think. Also it seems like it would be more of a practice thing than a learning thing. You'd already need to know a bunch before you started. I was really excited the first time I stumbled across that too, actually, but the more I looked at it the more it seemed to be entirely the wrong direction from what I was hoping for. Fingers crossed they'll reverse engineer it for English audiences, but my hopes aren't exactly high.