All Is Normal

Wife is back. Life is good.

Gallery Stuff

The Wife attended a couple of talks being held at the local gallery where her bear is being shown. I went down with her, and it was an interesting couple of talks on a) the publishing of art books because it’s fun and b) designer toys and how the market is slowly growing. After that it was back home to start cranking out this month’s GameAxis articles, and mess around with Obscure: Aftermath and Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus some more.

First Platinum Trophy

Whoo hoo. I got every single achievement in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune AGAIN. Now I have a shiny virtual trophy for all the world to see as proof that I really need to have a more fulfilling life.

So Bad They’re Good

In the same way that some movies possess enough cheese to elevate them from being merely unpleasant to weirdly enjoyable experiences in ways the production team never intended, so too can the same be said for games, albeit more rarely. A trip through Queen Street and a visit to a new EB Games that opened up there recently netted a couple of bargains that have now been added to the PS2 collection.

This got picked up for one reason and one reason alone; gorgeous cutscenes. The Wife saw it sitting in the used shelf just a day or two after I said I’d consider picking this game up if I ever found it for less than $20. This was Squenix’s attempt to do a Devil May Cry style 3rd person action shooter with a bit of the item and level management that Squenix RPGs are normally better known for. The end result falls totally flat on its face as a clumsy, slow-paced, not very fun shooter. However, the same team that did Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children also did the cutscenes for this game. Surprisingly, the version I found was a “Greatest Hits” title. But then again, slap anything with the words Final Fantasy VII on it and the devoted will buy AT LEAST 1 million copies, so it’ll sell respectable numbers regardless of how poor the game is. I’m not enjoying the actual mechanics of the game, but the story is compelling enough, since I do still harbor a fondness for the FFVII universe. It sure helps that the graphics engine pushes the PS2 just about as far as it’ll go so graphically, it’s nearly comparable to a terrible looking PS3 game.

This other title is pure, cheesy goodness. It’s actually a pretty recent game, only just released towards the end of March, but it’s already priced at bargain levels, at $20. It’s the sequel to the 2005 game Obscure which was essentially a highschool slasher flick. The first game involved a bunch of generic teenagers trying to survive a horrible adventure through their highschool-gone-wrong, and, just like a horror movie, they could die in horrible ways, with not all the characters necessarily needing to be alive by the end of the game to finish it. This sequel brings the kids back, now in college, and once again, more creepy stuff starts happening. It’s pretty much like any 80′s horror movie you’ve seen where the interchangeable characters aren’t there for you to identify with, so much as provide gleeful, horrible deaths as you progress. If you’re the sort that loves to provide a running commentary on bad movie in order to make the experience more fun, this is a more interactive version of that. Break it out when friends are around and let the sarcasm commence…

Friday Is All Over The Place

Kind of doddled with a bunch of different things today, including continuing my masochistic march through Devil May Cry 4‘s “Dante Must Die” mode (it hates gamers. It really, really hates them…) and in a fit of gamer nostalgia, firing up the old PS1 game Vagrant Story by Squenix, back when they were still Squaresoft. Man, what a difference 8 years makes… I look at these PS1 year 2000 graphics–remember how blown away I was at the time–and all I can do is shake my head. Also continued to crank out some pages of the comic for the Wife, and gave some thought to the next High Def Digest article. I think I have it nailed down and will get in touch with the editor about it soon.

More Writing

Sent off the High-Def Digest article and it was accepted with very minor tweaks. Other than that, wrote more of the comic, wrote some of the children’s novel and once again got annihilated by Green Grass & High Tides on Rock Band…

Typical Wednesday

Finished off the High-Def Digest article, though I’ll sit on it and give it the once over tomorrow before sending it off. Also started on a script for a comic the Wife’s been meaning to do for a while now. This is always fun. We make a good team. In other Wife-ly news the picture below that I once featured:

Has been selected to appear in a Street Fighter Tribute art book by Udon Entertainment.

And I should really get around to checking out Sunshine now that I’ve got that Blu-Ray disc sitting around…

Working Day

Started cranking out the next article for High-Def Digest. Other than that, got back into some Rock Band and have garnered a new appreciation for Coheed & Cambria. I dunno why, but their DLC song Tenspeed has suddenly catapulted itself into my “Oh my God, this song kicks ass!” category…