The Monthly Ritual

Yup, back to GameAxis articles for the next issue. And watching the Wife begin a slow but truly frightening mastery of the nuances of resource management in Civilization: Revolution. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in this much anticipation of a game. She’s alternately flipping between getting the PC version to tide her over until next month, or importing the UK version because for some reason, Europe gets the title a month before North America. This week, in fact.

Hot Sundays

Aside from writing up the article and swapping turns of the Civilization: Revolution demo (yes, we are playing a demo over and over again. We are pathetic), the only thing of note is that this year we can actually sleep comfortably at night thanks to the new portable air conditioner sitting in the bedroom. Little did I realize when we arrived in Toronto that the heat and humidity here during summer were only a few degrees less intolerable than Singapore throughout the year, so as stupid as it may seem to someone from the ol’ hometown, in Toronto, I definitely see the advantage in having an air conditioner in the house.

It’s Confirmed

We’re definitely getting Civilization: Revolution next month. That damn demo has got its claws in both of us real good.

Just Another Day

The temperatures rise, articles get written and money is accumulated by racing around the Daytona loop over and over and over again. Man, that F1 Ferrari racer better be worth it…

Damn

Warren Ellis can make damn near anything interesting again. Who would’a thought that he could have taken a failed enterprise like the old Marvel New Universe label and suddenly create a story with such a promising start? I’m all excited about this now…

Digging Up Old Games

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune finally got patched for trophies today. As result, it’s time to dust off that more recent PS3 classic and play through it one more time, just so I have online proof that I am dumb enough to perform every ridiculous task the game asks of me as a testament to my hardcore gamer-ness.

The End Is In Sight

For a while there I’d hit a brick wall in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. Having gotten to the final, fastest, most realistic and most punishing set of races, known as “S-Class” I was getting regularly creamed on the two most difficult courses. However, sheer stubbornness has paid off once again, and I managed to clear both races. Now all I have to do is complete a final, much easier race, and that coveted F1 Racer will be mine…

Escher With A Joystick

The Wife was dubious about my choice of purchasing this new game off the Playstation Store, but, as with so many things about gaming, her doubt quickly turned into obsession and she now has a new game she utterly hates with a passion but can’t stop playing. echochrome is an elegant little puzzle game that’s perfect after dinner. It’s inspired largely by the confusing illustrations of M. C. Escher, in that the visuals resemble simple geometric shapes that can’t actually exist in reality. The premise of the game is that players rotate the camera so that whatever they “see” becomes reality. In other words, if you want to walk over a hole, simply block that hole by rotating the camera so its obstructed from view, and it ceases to exist. If you want to fall down to a lower level that’s some distance away, rotate the camera so that level you’re on and the level you wish to fall to appear to be one on top of the other and when you fall down the hole, you’ll land on that level. It’s a difficult concept to grasp at first, you really need to see it in action to get it.

The Wife has gone bonkers over the game and is now toying with its level creator option to make her own confusing puzzles. Here’s a trailer to better get the point across.

Halloween For Nerds

< ![CDATA[

We didn’t do much for Halloween except be game geeks.  The Wife has spent so much time on the LittleBigPlanet level editor that one our friends came over to our place just to see the game that had kept her offline so much.  In a bizarre fit of unfortunate circumstance, our game broke.  The disc.  Somehow it had a small crack running from the central hole to a few millimeters into the game data, making it impossible to read.  Fortunately since the game was less than a week old, it was easy to get it exchanged, and after doing that, having dinner, and playing some Rock Band 2