Arivall’s and Departures

I had this 1000+ word manifesto chronicling the these past two weeks and my computer decides to randomly turn off and do no saving at all.

Shitfuck! Damnit, holiday language Roly, holiday language. Um, Eff this ess, man!

Instead of frustratingly pound on my keys until they break, I’m just gonna go ahead and calmly not rewrite it all from memory, and do a slight paraphrase on some of the things I touched on and maybe get to it at a later some other time when I don’t feel like putting my monitor on the floor and continuously stomp on it until my leg gets tired.

Week before last: heartbreaking. Games for Windows magazine left me. Thankfully, all the editors are still around at 1UP.com and will continue their content delivery there, but unfortunately the art team Michael Jennings and Rosemary Pinkham were both laid off. I have a soft spot for GFW, as they are my favorite, most intelligent group of editors whom I look up to greatly for their integrity and commitment to their careers. Had it not been for them, I’m not so sure I’d be determined in this whole writing thing. I owe a lot to them.

Weekend before this one: amazing in every respect.

This past weekend: I did a stupid amount of nothing and it kept teetering back and forth between semi-entertained and absolutely miserable for reasons that I’d rather not go into, thanks.

I bitched about stupid game conventions like, artifically lengthening gameplay time, putting a lot of the blame on Japan. They just can’t seem to wrap their heads around a lot of modern game design conventions. Case-in-point: Lost Odyssey and Devil May Cry 4: Lost Odyssey in that near end-game it falls apart by making you grind, thus making you backtrack to areas that you’ve already been and run around in circles like a fool until a random battle decides to occur and you do this seemingly insessintly and unendingly until you gain 5-10 levels, I didn’t take so kindly to that.

Then there was Devil May Cry 4 — you spend the entire game going through above-average designed levels and bosses, until the main character thus far gets taken out of the picture and you get to run through all the levels again before you’re allowed to see the ending. Again, man. Japan. I’m not putting all the blame all developers, but the majority is certainly guilty of retarded game design conventions that artificially lengthen game time, and now they don’t really do anything but frustrate me.

I just put Devil May Cry 4 down the second it even proposed that to me, and since I was actually vested in the Lost Odyssey narrative, I found a guide on the internet, read up on the events leading to the end and got whatever closure I could from the thumbnail sized YouTube screen.

Karen Chu and Patrick Joynt had the most kickass wedding ever, complete with Rock Band, an acoustic rendition of the evergreen Still Alive, and rick rolling. If and when I do wed, I definitely want it just as amazinggly incredible as theirs. Best wishes, guys!

Grand Theft Auto IV can’t make it to me quick enough, the wait is unbearable. It’ll be here by Wednesday if the United States Postal Service and God loves me, if they don’t, probably not.

And that was about it, kiddos. Except last time, it was way more drawn out with many, many more words, with much, much more detail.