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Just thought you should know: 1. IGN has a FIVE MINUTE Suikoden 4 trailer available for download that rocked my socks off. I can’t wait to get my hands on this follow up to my 2002 game of the year. 2. I started playing Fire Emblem today and with it I am very well pleased. Great strategy based RPG elements. 3. I feel that I’m getting very close to finishing my facelift of pajamo.com, b-ruce will be next, MoveableType for all! |
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See my pain Hello again, True Believers, b-ruce here, saying: “Pardon our dust”. You see I haven’t been able to post here as much as I’d like to, due to various and many circumstances. Firstly as you may note in the picture with the wet-vac, our kitchen is under attack from a mysterious character, who goes by the code name: “The Contractor”. He claims that he has the powers to transform my food-making room into an entirely different looking culinarium, with stronger powers of cookery and a sight more pleasing to the eye. This means that in order to avoid being covered in a fine soot and have my ears pierced by the various sounds of progress I have to barricade myself in my room. This also means, as noted by the first picture, that to avoid my cat being covered in a fine soot or falling through the various holes created each day, he has to be locked in here with me. As you can imagine, locking a cat up in a room for over a proposed week (don’t be hatin’ PETA, we let them out when we have the time to observe that they don’t eat/do anything detrimental to themselves) does not make said room very work-friendly. I am beset at all times with his petitions for release, as inarticulate as they are. Now, what do I do when I am able to think straight? Well if you like movie reviews, you may have noticed that pajamo.com has received quite the face lift. I’m struggling through various user manuals and support forums for MoveableType, trying to finish the transition and get that site back on its feet. I like the “comments” feature on MT so much that I’m almost fully committed to re-rolling b-ruce.com after I finish with pajamo. This leads to my last post-deterrent: if I’m going to have to repost all of these witty tidbits in a week, why post in the mean time? The answer? For you, dear friends, it’s all for you. |
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Happy New Year, now here’s some reading. Three articles over at Gamespot I found to be interesting. The first is by my hero Greg Kasavin. He’s ranting about how he would rather not see his favorite movies bastardized into games, and I agree. When I saw “Seven Samurai 20xx” at E3 I damn near fell down laughing. Then I asked one of the booth people if there would actually be 7 of them you could control, and was told something like: “not quite 7 but a few other characters join up with you later”. Greg’s right on the money about feeling the publisher’s motivation is suspect on these titles. Also I think it’s interesting to note that he now seems to feel that games can be considered art, I guess he saw it my way. Also worth mentioning is a rant on the lack of quality game writing and the lack of studios seeking “game writers”, again, I would have to agree. There’s also an article about how this was a weak year for games. The sales numbers do seem to indicate this as well. And while he’s right, a lot of people are waiting for “Halo 2” and “Half Life 2”, I’m not one of them. Still the year seemed weak to me as well, mostly because there was only one big November release in my mind: “Final Fantasy X-2”. In past years I’ve had problems juggling November games, last year I had to find all sorts of bizarre times to play “Suikoden 3” so that I could play “GTA: Vice City” when my roommate was home (he liked to watch me play it), all the while chiding myself for not getting to my long-awaited “Shenmue 2” fast enough. The year before that I was racing through “GTA 3” so I would be ready for “MGS 2” when it came out a couple weeks later, then race through that so I could commit myself to “Final Fantasy X”. Still I don’t think this is any reason for gamers to worry. The people behind “Halo 2” and the other big shooter games that got delayed did the right thing. They’re not rushing substandard titles to the stores at our expense. This might throw their expected revenues off a bit, but I don’t think the delay will cause sales to drop. To be honest I would rather the biggest games of the year didn’t all come out around the same time, and that time wouldn’t be when I’m focusing on spending money on people other than me. If what they say is true, then the majority of gamers are older than 21 and can afford to buy a game when they please. Our need for Santa has become greatly diminished. So I guess I’m hoping that 2003 will start a new trend, where a big game will launch every quarter (Zelda, March ’03; Star Wars: KotOR, July; Soulcaliber 2, August; Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy XI, Ratchet and Clank 2, Jak 2, Final Fantasy X-2, Beyond Good and Evil, Fall… damn, maybe this wasn’t a slow year after all. |