Day Of Errands

Just another quiet, pleasant day in the Annex. Bank stuff was done, groceries were picked up, walks down the street occurred, advice was dispensed about how best to play God of War II (I loaned to the Upstairs Neighbor, he’s no longer getting any work done) and dinner was had in the backyard with all the neighbors to welcome Upstairs Neighbor.

Also, while walking down Bloor, we happened to walk past a used CD/DVD store and saw, brand new, in the window, this:

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that we would pick it up, since the Wife is a huge fan of Go/dzilla/jira, and at $17 for a brand new DVD of the remastered version I’d heard about, this was impossible to resist. I don’t think I’m going to be seeing this on Blu-Ray anytime in the near future anyway, so bring on the rubber-suited, model busting goodness.

I’m pretty happy with this particular version, since not only did they remaster it–as best they could, considering the deteriorating, surprisingly NOT archived state of the original–they also include the original 1956, bastardized American version with Raymond Burr as a reporter commenting on the carnage, and there is a pretty in depth commentary from some “Godzilla experts” and give a fairly detailed account of not just the production of Godzilla, but the post-war society and mindset of the Japanese that created one of the most famous rubber-suited monsters of all time.

Now to settle in for a busy next few days. The animated series requires some gearing up for writing scripts, the magazine still has one last article owing, there’s the monthly installment of the comic book to crank out, and IGN has suddenly written in to pretty much say yes to ALL the article ideas I’ve thrown at them, so it’s time to get some more game writin’ in.

Damn, when did I get so busy?

But first, more Persona 3.

Round 7: FIGHT!

I am now patiently neglecting the 7th draft of the Script That Wouldn’t Die in favor of writing a daily blog post with no substance, insight or value of any kind. Go me. With any luck, there will only be a few more revisions left on this script, though I was kind of hoping that it would have been mostly done by now. At first this program was supposed to have been done by the end of November. Then it was supposed to have been done by December 21st. Now I’m told it likely won’t be done until the end of January, which is spectacularly inconvenient for all concerned since I took on the job under the assumption it would be finished before 2007 and now it looks I won’t be around by the time it actually goes into editing and voice over.

On the other hand, I am now left with only a few articles to write for GameAxis and a part of me feels weirdly sad about that. It’s a good magazine. It’s not perfect, but I’m actually pretty proud of the job we’ve done, and I’m going to miss being a part of the team.

On the other, other hand the occupation of playing games because someone is paying me to review them has now changed to playing games for other reasons entirely which I can’t yet talk about. I’m going through The Longest Journey: Dreamfall for a second time, this time paying attention to names, putting more thought into character details and relationships and generally just getting a better, more critical understanding of what is happening in the story. The first time I played was purely for pleasure and was unbelievably fun. This second time is for more creative reasons, and is proving to still be immeasurably fun, but also a lot more interesting now that I’m actually thinking about what’s going on, and actively pursuing all the references scattered throughout, such as the many allusions to Australian Aboriginal dreamtime, something I’d completely missed the first playthrough, which is now making many more things in the game much more significant thematically.

Too bad they don’t have any “Game Studies” classes in the same way they had Film Studies when I went to university. I’m pretty sure I would have kicked serious ass in such a class.

No Amusing Post Today

I just realized I have three scripts and an episodic synopsis to write…

Finally, I Did Some Work

A full day at the office (time’s a wastin’ on getting the next issue of GameAxis out) was rounded out by another meeting for the Video Game Documentary That Obstinately Refuses To Just Roll Over And Die. Followed by going home and writing more stuff for the travel show series.

See? I CAN be productive.

But I still squeezed in some Final Fantasy XII. Over 100 hours clocked in, and nowhere near being done…

Ack, Busy Again

Just when I thought I’d cleared out my weekend for 48 Hours Of Rock (Guitar Hero 2 is arriving on these shores the day after tomorrow) I get hit with more work on scripts.

The video game documentary is now moving onto its fourth draft, and this, hopefully, will be the last since they need to start shooting next week. So much for burning through Final Fantasy XII and Guitar Hero 2 for a few days.

Also, I have been tasked to review a new music game called Elite Beat Agents for the DS which has already enjoyed an earlier Japanese release and has now been localized for Westerners. They ditched the old songs–which as far as I can tell where all J-Pop–and replaced them with hilarious selections like September by Earth, Wind & Fire, YMCA by the Village People and even Material Girl by Madonna. A cursory playthrough reveals that this may, in fact, be the funniest game released on the DS to date, but it’s definitely got a western sensibility to it that may not carry over very well with die-hard Japanese loving gamers of Singapore. The game is based around the eponymous agents, who run around cheerleading peopkl through their various challenges and giving the will and spirit Through The Power Of Music to succeed. Few people here can relate to the travails of a baby sitter in love with a jock football player, or a washed up batter trying to reclaim his former glory and get back into baseball. But it’s just ridiculously fun to play, though you’ll probably need headphones and monitor yourself in public to keep from tapping your foot to the rhythm or grinning like an idiot for no apparent reason at the onscreen hi-jinks.

Scripts Finished

At least until the next round. Which leaves more room for Final Fantasy XII. The Wife has already taken a liking to it, and is happily grinding away, raising the levels of the characters even when I’m not playing, thus keeping things progressing at an extremely rapid pace.

Blogger’s Working Again! Whee!

I seem to occasionally go through these stretches where even though I can write and save posts, Blogger won’t actually let me publish them. The last four days was another one of those stretches. Bah.

Not that I have anything particularly interesting to say today either. I still need to finish off another script, have an article for Maxim coming up, and there are a bunch of games that are going to be needing reviews. Plus Bully is IMMENSELY fun and there’s Guitar Hero and FFXII on the horizon.

Yes, I admit it. I am sad. But I am a sad person that is enjoying himself quite a bit, so I can live with my state of pathos rather than enjoy some virtuous, highly respectable misery.

Holiday Still Means Work

Today is actually Hari Raya in Singapore, which, if you are surrounded by Muslims the way I am, means that you don’t experience any morbid fear that this is some bizarre alien ritual involving bombing Americans to the stone age. It is in fact an old Islamic tradition where they celebrate the ending of the month long fasting they have been doing as a reminder to exercise restraint and self-control in all aspects of your life.

It also means not having to go in to work. Sadly, I am still working away anyhow as yet another revision of the script for the game documentary goes in (they really, REALLY like getting in multiple revisions) and I experience some mild relief from the near constant itching that’s been plagueing me for the last few days. Looks like steroids are good for something after all, though I suppose having two different kinds in my bloodstream at the moment would mean an automatic fail in any athletic competition right now..

Maaaaaan…

Four scripts in four days. I never want to do that again.

Back to gaming, and hopefully a far more irrresponsible lifestyle for the rest of the week. Oh wait, there’s still all those reviews that need writing for GameAxis. Crap.

Thank God there’s a vacation coming up…

Writing, Gaming But Mostly Writing

A surprising amount was actually squeezed into today. While the Wife slept, I managed to start on the second last script I need to get out, then hopped into town for a bit to meet up with some old local friends and catch a Woody Allen film, the film in question being Scoop. It’s kind of weird to see Woody Allen going back to “purely” entertaining films like he did earlier in his career, but I think it’s actually working out okay for him. I didn’t think Scoop was exactly Annie Hall, but then you can’t expect an artist to create EVERYTHING at that level.

After that it was time to pick some games I’d been waiting on, as well as the final memory card for the PS2 I think I’ll ever need (I say this because I’m pretty sure that at some point I’ll have a PS3 and then I’ll just transfer everything over to the hard drive and never have to use memory cards again), as well as Capcom’s Godhand–a bizarre and funny brawler by the same guys that made Okami, and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner which is the latest RPG (though this time with a distinct action bent) from Atlus, the God-hating company that seems to just love destroying or pointing out how evil Christianity is in its games and summarily tasking you with killing God.

Oh well, almost half-way done on that second last script. May as well just suck it up, finish it and then get back to gaming…