I’m often instructing Pajamo to achieve proper gaming focus. It’s the key to appreciating great RPGs. They may start out slow or seem too complicated at first, but if you can weather the initial two hours, you’ll have burrowed under its skin and found the juicy pulp – the plot. But that doesn’t mean that once you’ve gotten in the grove you’re home free. Dangers lay ahead, lack of time to play the game and hectic scheduling that forces a break in consecutive days of play. It’s just like reading a book. You can’t read the first 10% and then take three days off, you won’t remember what was happening – or at least I can’t. Focus, proper focus is the key to getting the most enjoyable experience out of any story being told to you. That’s the reason that movies don’t often have intermissions and live theater sucks, because a break will cause a disruption in the pacing and the viewer to lose focus.

And so that’s where I’ve been for the past couple weeks, deeply focused on “Tales of Symphonia”. I was so focused on it that I couldn’t even spare the time to post here that I was playing it. And on Tuesday I completed the main quest, witnessing the end of the story. And while I was very happy with the experience it’s left me in a rather strange state. I’ve been less energetic and productive these last few days, settling for watching bit of the Cubs game, or whatever’s on VH1 (side note – “Best Week Ever” is brilliant, it’s like “I Love the Present” ^.^ ) or the last half of “Rocky 3” (happened a couple of times now, which is ok but the first half is better). I’ve been apprehensive to starting a new game for some reason and fear that replaying “Tales” right away would be a less effective use of my gaming time. Some slight thinking on the matter during commercial breaks has lead me to the conclusion you see in the title of the post. I feel my theory is most likely correct and as infallible as any other products of my astounding reasoning brain – that’s not the issue here. The issue is this: this isn’t the first time I’ve finished a good to great RPG, this isn’t the first time I’ve finished a good to great RPG this year. So why is it that my great-thinkin’ smooth-talkin’ brain hasn’t realized this before? I can think of two possible explanations: 1. This is a first-time occurrence, a byproduct of my current age & living circumstances, or 2. I have thought of this before but since it’s so mundane and involves the boredom of me, I have since chosen not to remember it.

p.s. Danny “Who? No seriously, who?” Williams knocked out Mike “Will brandish fisticuffs for food” Tyson in the fourth round of their ludicrously high-priced bout. Look for Tyson to turn to crazy fighting in Japan to try and get some out of debt money.

Before you ask, yes I did see Arturo Gatti’s stunning one-punch (and a body punch at that!) knock out yesterday night. I wish him congratulations, said praise is also due to Jesse James Leija for out working a lazy Bojado (who may have suffered some sort of injury in the early rounds, he whispered something in substitute cornerman Buddy McGirt’s ear in-between rounds 3 & 4 or somewheres around there).

And as a bonus, here’s a stupid thought I had today: “huh, the house key’s made by the same company as the lock, what a coincidence.”

Didn’t do too much this weekend. But I did see Anchorman yesterday. It was hilarious. I was laughing loudly and often and so was the rest of the theater. The strange thing is I can’t really explain any of the jokes or gags in the film. It’s one of those things that you have to see to understand.

I spent a good deal of today designing a fan site for Emanuel Augustus, the veteran boxer. There’s not a whole lot there right now but the main purpose of the site is to alert the public of Augustus’ upcoming fights, so I think the bulk of the site is set up.

Okay, so I know it’s kinda pot kettle black for me to be griping about folks using the company computer for personal stuff. I mean, I currently waiting on word from the patent office about the rights to it, but this is just plain wrong: I came into work this morning (hey, 11:30 still morning) and found my idiot assistant rebooting the computer. He said something about not knowing why but it was working very slowly. After a brief bit of detective work, by which I mean running Internet Explorer and looking at it, I find that a new program has been installed (some sort of search tool from Lycos or one of thems) and that we’re getting pop-ups like crazy. So I go to the control panel and remove the program. There I notice that there’s something called the “xxx toolbar” also installed, I try to remove it but to no effect. So I decide to check the history on the google searchbar and sure enough someone – almost definitely, the aforementioned idiot assistant – made a search for “Girls of Home Depot”. No shit. Girls of Home Depot. I assume some link found from the search (but not from page one from the looks of it) installed the xxx toolbar and search tool among other things. I also noticed that he made a search for some model (Jeanette Rundgren, apparently she’s Swedish, how quaint) the day or two before.

So with Way of the Samurai 2 shipping today I thought I would check out the reviews. Both Gamespot and IGN panned it. It seems as if they didn’t learn from their Way of the Samurai mistakes and just put out another game with the same engine. *sigh* I’ll still take a look at it via Gamefly, but I can’t say this isn’t disappointing. I’ve been going through season 4 of Highlander and am so ready for a good swordplay game.

Speaking of which, I am very well pleased with season 4 of Highlander. I know I’m probably outing myself as a huge nerd but I was down with the series back in the mid 90’s and I’m digging it again on DVD. It’s not defendable art like Buffy or Homicide, but the nostalgia combined with good corny action/drama leave me well entertained.

Gamespot also just jumped the gun and posted a Tales of Symphonia review, 8.8! Very exciting news, still I have some reservations as I’ve been told that the game features sparse voice acting. I fear that could mean the game would be Grandia 2 at best, La Purcelle at worst.

And finally, the soundtrack for Madden 2005 has been announced. Very heavy on the indie rock, which I find strange as all the indie hipsters I knew didn’t game, or at least not in front of me. And by the looks of Gamespot’s poll of the day I’m right in thinking this is not a popular decision.