This weekend I was down in Portland, celebrating late Christmas with my family. Mostly it was just to spend some time together, but we did have a few presents to exchange. However, my mom hadn’t had time to get us our presents (I know! She had an extra month even!!), so we took a trip to the mall and had ourselves a shopping spree. I ended up getting a renewal to my subscription of Game Informer and a couple PS2 ‘greatest hits’ games: Ratchet & Clank, and Jak & Daxter. I started playing Ratchet & Clank last night, and it’s a nice little platformer with weapons tacked on for extra fun. Of course there’s the standard shiny thing that you must collect, and unfortunately that also means crate smashing is in abundance… The game isn’t too original, and it’s kind of easy… but it makes for a nice veg-out game.
February 2004 Archives
I am writing this entry on my new Pocket PC two I jit from my work . I am ring the transcriba feature that recognizes my handwritivy and Converts it tr text As yew am see it's wt perfectjbut its filte . Tla nothig .if you need the translat in ,see below
TRANSLATION: I am writing this entry on my new Pocket PC that I got from my work. I am using the transcriber feature that recognizes my handwriting and converts it to text. As you can see it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. If you need the translation, see below.
I saw Spellbound, a documentary about the National Spelling Bee, over the weekend... I wasn't too impressed. The movie starts out strong as it introduces a few of the kids that have already made it to the finals. You get to know these little dictionaries (and their odd parents) and you can't help but pick a 'favorite' going into the competition. And then, the competition begins and you realize... oh crap, this is a movie about a spelling bee! It's sorta interesting to see the kids perform under pressure, but for the most part you're just watching word after word being spelled. I guess I didn't dislike watching this movie, but it just isn't entertaining enough to recommend.
I beat Prince of Persia last night and overall it was an excellent game! This is my pick for best game of 2003; if you play videogames, you MUST get this game (and it's out for all three consoles, so there's no excuse). The game is full of great puzzles that keep you thinking and never frustrate. A lot of the areas are pretty obvious to solve (but are still very fun to traverse). There are a few rooms, however, that'll stop you cold. When you reach one of these rooms, you'll spend some time walking around the area just looking for possible 'leads' (and trust me, you won't mind looking around, this game is BEAUTIFUL!)
The only knock on the game is the fighting which can get a bit annoying since the game just throws dude after dude at you. Your first few fights can be overwhelming and somewhat difficult, but once you master the fighting controls it becomes monotonous as you take out ten copies of the same guy by repeating the same sequence of moves. Though the fighting isn't too exciting, the controls are very responsive and it really does look amazing as the prince fights four baddies at once. Another plus for the fighting sections... no boss battles!!! (I really do hate boss battles, but that's a topic for another post) Anyway, buy this game... simple as that.
What I’m about to say will cause much controversy among my circle of friends, but here goes… I absolve Colin Quinn of all past crimes against humanity. See, pretty much everyone I know (myself included, until recently) hates Quinn. I’m just now realizing that circumstances and not Quinn himself are the source of this hatred.
The first time I became aware of Colin Quinn, he had taken over the SNL Weekend Update position from Norm Macdonald. The story goes that Don Ohlmeyer, NBC’s West Coast President, sent a memo to SNL in essence saying “Norm’s not funny, get him off Weekend Update.” So Michaels yanked Norm, and replaced him with Quinn. This did not sit well with us since Norm’s Weekend Update was the funniest thing on the show! And then, here’s this new dude muddling through his lines with that abrupt, flat Quinn delivery… not cool.
I was all set to hate Quinn forever, and then I saw his current show Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. Oh at first I refused to watch, thinking the show a cheap knock-off of Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect (which was an awesome show). But as the months passed by and the show had yet to be cancelled, I started seeing bits of it… and I liked what I saw! The jokes are brutally funny and when they’re not, the other comedians razz the deliverer of the bomb. And, Quinn self-deprecating style on this show really works! I’m guessing he was funny all along and it was just the poor match up of the Weekend Update format that masked it.
So I challenge all you Quinn haters out there to take the Tough Crowd challenge. If after watching just three simple episodes you aren’t completely satisfied, we’ll give you a full refund*.
I’ve added a new page (mostly for my convenience) that lists my videogames. This is actually an Excel spreadsheet that I’ve maintained for quite a while and I’ve simply converted to html. And, Movable Type is such a dream that I was able to incorporate it into my site with very little work. What follows is the description of what I had to do to incorporate it in… If you don’t care, just check out the page.
Converting the spreadsheet to html was simple since Excel does it for me. I chose ‘Save as Web Page’ and voila, a webpage that I can edit with Excel! I then created a new index template in Movable Type. The index template specifies the actual page name, and includes standard things like the header and sidebar. In the body of the index template, I included the line <$MTInclude module="GamesList"$> which basically tells Movable Type to replace that line with whatever text is in the template module named “GamesList.” Then, I created a new template module, but instead of typing something into the text box, I specified that it grab it’s text from a file (which I named the same as my Excel generated html page). I dropped the Excel web page onto my server, rebuilt the site, and I was done!
For as long as I can remember I've received periodic junk mail offerings to join Columbia House... I finally caved in and joined the DVD club. I mean, 7 DVD's for $30 with only 3 more to buy, how could I say no?!? But they've already messed up... They sent me 2 copies of Shawshank Redemption, and I'm pretty sure I only wanted one. Now, if they had sent the second SR in addition to the 7 DVDs I ordered I'd be happy (yay, a free movie to give or sell or whatever). But of course, the 2nd SR was instead of one of the other movies I ordered (and I can't for the life of me remember what movie it was... I guess it was one I really wanted!) I suppose I can call customer service and get them to exchange it, but I've put it off since I assume it'll be a major hassle (and I still gotta figure out what movie I wanted in its place). Damn you Columbia House!
I beat Ratchet & Clank last night. Fun game, final boss battle sucked! On to Jak & Daxter...
Well, Jak & Daxter sucks… I have a feeling this game didn’t suck when it originally came out, but boy has it aged. For those not in the know, Jak is a 3D platformer, ala Mario64… and unfortunately it doesn’t stray far from the Mario64 style. The story is non-existent and the goal of the game is to collect ‘power cells’ (or stars in Mario talk). But, the “go collect crap” gameplay has gotten SO old by now that I just don’t have the patience for it, especially since I’ve recently played some good 3D platformers (Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper) that don’t rely on collection as the primary goal. To be fair, R&C and Sly both came out after Jak and both clearly built off what Jak did right… But, after playing those two, going back to Jak is like going back to B&W TV after experiencing color.
I just picked up the Ratchet & Clank sequel today… I don’t think I’ll ever finish Jak (I’m halfway through it). That also means that I will probably never check out Jak 2 either…
Sometime last year I got Devil May Cry for free with some special offer at Gamestop. Last night was the first time and last time I put it in the PS2. I knew that it wasn’t going to be my kind of game when I got it, but it was free so why not? Well, last night curiosity got the best of me (the game was critically acclaimed after all) so I stuck it in. I had to clear some space on my memory card (I’ve finally filled it up, so every new game begins with a garbage collection mini-game!) but then I was off.
The beginning cinematic was interesting enough but then the game started and instantly my fears were confirmed… fixed camera angles. I’m sure there’s SOME reason why developers still use fixed camera angles, (Capcom, I’m looking at you) but it sure as hell isn’t to please me! The last game I played with a fixed camera was Eternal Darkness… everyone I know gushes about this game (my coworker Aldo even has the box art as his desktop!) but I HATED it. I beat Eternal Darkness only because it had a decent story and a pretty original insanity effect. However, I truly despised the last few hours of gameplay… I couldn’t WAIT to beat it so that I could sell it back to the store from whence it came. No more exceptions; if a game has piss poor cameras, I refuse to play.
Tony & Michelle dropped by today for a couple of hours... We ended up getting dinner at Red Robin and then we rented Intolerable Cruelty. I'm a huge Coen bros. fan (thanks to The Big Lebowski, the best movie EVER!) but IC had me worried. I had heard that the Coens weren’t the sole writers, and I felt that the previews showed it. But, we rented it, and watched it anyway… and? Blah. There was nothing WRONG with the movie (well, I guess except the plot twist that was SO predictable that it did ruin some scenes because I ‘knew’ what was going to happen). It just felt like a standard romantic comedy with a bit of a mean side (and if for some reason you’re looking to see a mean romantic comedy, you should see the far superior Down With Love instead).
