Arivall’s and Departures

You heard me right! I am now the proud owner of a Playstation 3. My birthday rolled around this past Friday, as it tends to on a seemingly yearly basis. Wait. Hmm. How do birthdays work for those who were born on a leap year? Oh man, that’s some intense stuff. Though, I think it’s best I leave that particular rumination for another time.

This particular birthday was damn awesome, I got the Metal Gear Essential Collection and Persona 3 FES from my aunt. She’s so cool. Especially, when there is a hint of — uhh, hinting involved. And by hinting, I mean coating her desktop with boxarts along with special effects created from the technologically advanced Microsoft Paint.

And now for the main event, that has been spoiled twice over (in the headline and first paragraph), the wondrous Sony Playstation 3. Not only is it an amazing present, but how I stumbled upon it is almost better.

Originally I was supposed to have to wait until that damned June 12, that I’ve been bitching about for about 3 months now (which is still entirely too far away for anyone’s sake, especially mine). That fateful night I was to go out at midnight, bring protection with me, wade through and fight off raging fanboys for what was supposed to be a semi-limited to limited PS3 80GB bundle that includes a DualShock 3, and MGS4. Now, I only have to go through that rigmarole for MGS4.

As I expected, the wait was eating me alive. I was additionally bummed that I wouldn’t get a chance to make my way through MGS3 before the release of 4.

But then I caught wind of grabbing those who pick up a PS3 at Wal-Mart, will also be walking out of there with a $100 gift card.

As anyone would, I began to contemplate and calculate. Considering that backwards compatibility is a huge deal to me, I would try to find an 80GB or, preferably, 60GB since it essentially has a PS2 built in it via the Emotion Engine chipset. Without this promo, I’d be roughly $120 out if I were to still go out and grab a DualShock 3 and MGS4 separately. Subtract $100 after the gift card and then I’d be out, give or take, $20. Personally, I think it’s a fair price to pay for having it a good week and a half early.

The hard part is trying to find a backwards compatible model, which have all now been discontinued. Early Sunday morning, the first day of the promotion, I headed out to the local Mart of Wal’s. Upon entering I darted my happy ass over to the electronics section, and was filled with sadness when all I saw was a mountain of 40GB units, which mind you, I’d be perfectly with if they had BC. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I went up and asked one of the employee’s if they knew about any 80GB or even the long extinct 60GB beasts. He walked over to the mountain of 40GB units, busted out a keyring that would make the most upstanding janitor jealous, opened that impenetrable theft-proof glass, pushed the shitty 40’s aside, and (cue divine music, please? No? Drumroll, at least?) not one, but two 60GB units.

I found myself flabbergasted, dumbfounded and another stupid word I can’t think of right now. And the Wal-Mart dude could tell, I saw him smirk at my reaction.

Even though I was about to hand over $499.99, plus tax, I was indescribably ecstatic. In what I remember to be an overly-cheerful, almost childish in nature voice, I asked him to wait as I ran over to the accessories isle to find a DualShock 3.

And I’m rambling.

Long story short: I hauled it over to the cashier (who proceeded to give me a poo-face because I busted out a credit card, but that’s beside the point), and walked out of there with a backwards compatible PS3 that was manufactured in January 2007 and couldn’t have been happier about it.

It’s weird, though. I bought it specifically for one game and feel pretty okay about it. Of course, I’m going to go back and play through the PS3’s backlog, but my entire motivation for purchasing was MGS4. I have a feeling Sony is gonna be really happy when they see June’s numbers.

Took that bad boy home and tossed in Metal Gear Solid 3 and enjoyed an upscaled and anti-aliased dive into 1964 as Kojima envisioned it with an ear-to-ear smile on my face.

Best birthday ever.

June 12th is so close, yet so far away. I keep telling myself, “Three more weeks. Three long, arduous weeks.”

Metal Gear Solid 4 releases exactly three weeks from today. I’m sure I’ve dwelled on this before, but it’s a little insane to think that a decade has passed since first playing Metal Gear Solid. Technically, more than half of my life has been spent following and waiting for the next entry in mindfuck that is MGS. And it’s finally going to end, or at least Solid Snake’s involvement in it will.

It’s really bittersweet. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine not having Snake around past his apearance in MGS4. And on the other, it’s great to have some form of finality and closure that so rarely ever occurs in a long-standing series. Early reviews and specifically EGM’s Shane Bettenhausen have stated that it ties up virtually ALL loose ends and satisfactorily explains all of its impossibilities.

Let’s assume that all the series’ mindfucks are indeed explained within this finale. If that comes to fruition, I am forced to say that this method and delivery of storytelling is disappointingly unique. It needs to happen more often.

If I really think about it, I don’t think that there is a stronger character in the medium. In MGS, Hideo Kojima created a universe in which I almost believe that a grafted arm can instill two characters in one body. I’m sure that it’s mostly caused by my love for the series, but I find it spectacularly easy for me to suspend my disbelief.

I don’t know if you can tell. But I’m really excited for Metal Gear Solid 4. And I’m really glad I can hide it, or else I’d be consistently making fool out of myself by ranting and raving about it all.

To keep my mind off the awfully imminent release of MGS4, I’ve been digging into The World Ends With You and Persona 3. Although, I don’t think I’m ready to dig too deep into them just yet as I’m still very early in both games.

But, wow.

I don’t even know where to start. I draw striking similarities from both, with very obvious and distinct differences.

Having just recently played and given up on Lost Odyssey, I was looking to find some other JRPG’s. The 360 lacking, I went waaaay back to the impeccable PS2 library and after hearing great things about Persona 3, I decided to pick up Persona 3 FES. FES is a re-relase of Persona 3 that features tweaks and a really sweet epilogue, that from what I hear provides pretty decent closure. Man, it’s all about the closure this week, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that 4 hours in, I’ve barely scratched the surface. And I’m scared. I’m scared that I’m going to love it and it will do terrible, terrible things to my life. Those first four hours were all in a single session and my only indication that I’d been playing for as long as I had been was the change from light to dark.

I’m just really glad to be enjoying JRPG’s again, as well as having something to play over the next three weeks. I’m gonna go and get back to that life-sucking demon I was referring to earlier. Later!

I received my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV a day late, this Wednesday. But hey, that’s a fair price to pay when Gamefly is the most financially sound option. Especially, in the era where games retail for $60. Thus, my not writing about it after my first session — I was already anxious enough as it was, so I just went on to the whole actually playing the game part. And now, I’m kinda glad I didn’t instantly write it up after my bit of time with the game. Had I done that, it’s more than likely that I’d have ended up glossing over it’s unbelievably dense and believable open-world nature and phenomenal writing, among other things just as every other review has, instead of the unique moment I just had.

And before you ask, it didn’t involve auto theft, homicide, nor hooker runs. No, this moment completely blindsided me and more than likely won’t mean anything to anyone else as it was unique to me and my life.

Early on, you meet this girl, Michelle, she immediately takes a liking to Niko (a fresh off the boat immigrant from Eastern Europe), at the end of the mission you drop her off at home and the two of you exchange numbers. Pretty standard stuff so far. Not long after, you find yourself on your first in-game date with her.

It’s a mandatory mission and serves as a tutorial for the dating and hanging-out-with-buds element that’s interwoven throughout the game. Niko and Michelle go bowling, throughout the night they got to know each other a little better. At the end of the night Niko drives her home and that was the end of the mission as well as, for me, the end of seeing Michelle.

Throughout the game, calls are made to and from various characters, I found myself blowing them off because I was much more interested in advancing the story than going bowling or playing darts with some fool. But this particular call was different as it had an almost unbelievable amount of congruency as to what is going on in my life at this particular point and time.

10 hours into the game Niko receives a call from Michelle and she says something to the effect of, “Hey Niko, remember me? It’s Michelle, the idiot you’ve been ignoring for a weeks.”

It hit me hard. Harder than I ever thought a game, or even any form of entertainment would ever be capable of. I’m aware that it was incredibly circumstantial, but that doesn’t negate its occurance. But man, if my heart didn’t sink a little at that comment. Exactly what I’d just done to this blotch of pixels and splatter of polygons is exactly what another person had been doing to me.

I know that this moment was extremely circumstantial and of inconceivable specificity, but damn if it didn’t have a substantial impact.

On a broader note, I am really enjoying GTA IV and the re-imagined Liberty City. It’s really fun, and isn’t that all that matters?

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.

Spring break was so full of fail. Not spring break itself, but moreso the timing of everything during spring break. And when it finally decided to get good, it ended. Funny how it works out that way. If it was at all possible, I’d like to relive this past weekend, if not stretch it out to the length of the week. It wasn’t terrible by any means, it was just kinda ‘blah!’ and then it decided to end.

In honor of the impending release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the first half of break was spent (re)playing through as much Metal Gear Solid I could get my hands on. For me, that meant Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I don’t have $30 to just all out spend on that amazingly cheap and tempting Essential Pack.

At first I was kinda down on the original, simply because the visuals. But with upscaling filters and an 8800GTS, that problem was solved pretty easily. By and large it looked like a PS1 game (i.e. shit), but I dealt with it somehow. Probably because of the codec sequences, the character development and pure nostalgia. As bat-shit motherfucking insane as Kojima is, he and his team know how to take a concept and turn it into nothing short of a masterpiece.

After marathon-manning my way through the first I immediately jumped right into the second, and still don’t get why everyone bashes Raiden. Sure, his girlfriend, Rose is royal pain in the ass, but that’s not her fault! Actually, I do kinda get it. Everyone wanted more Snake. But even so, the game was every bit as good as the first. Get a few drinks in me and I may go crazy and suggest that it’s better, but shh don’t tell anyone.

That nostalgia fueled trip reminded me that it’s been a full 10 years since I played through the first. That means I was probably six-ish, or so — that’s a long time to be following a story of any kind. Of course, my feeble six-year-old mind couldn’t make anything out of what the hell was going on. But I do remember loving every second of it. And what’s more is I don’t replay through games often, if you recall, but I savored every moment while revisiting of those two games.

I guess it’s a sentiment as to how much I love those games, now I can only hope that MGS4 won’t let me down and that I’ll have my grubby little paws on it day one. Now it’s time for the MGS media blackout, I want to go in clean. Probably not gonna work so well.

I think the only other game I’m looking forward to as much as MGS4 is GTA4, but I’m sure I’ll splurge about that when I am good and ready.

Speaking of games you’ve played through before, I was able to get a hold of Lost Odyssey. And while I haven’t actually played through it per se, I may as well have. I mean, this is Final Fantasy, just without outright being called Final Fantasy, and it also doesn’t have the suck that quite a few Final Fantasy’s have had as of late.

It’s pretty much the spiritual successor to Final Fantasy and for two big reasons – producer and director Hironobu Sakaguchi and composer Nobou Uematsu were heavily involved with the project and from what I’ve seen so far it has reinvigorated my love for JRPG’s — but I think very specifically in the context of next-gen.

After playing for a good 14 hours or so, I’m still enamored with the world that they’ve built and the characters that they’ve surrounded it with. Kaim wasn’t so great until the end of Disk 1, he finally opened up and started talking once he stumbled upon Cooke and Mack. Seth is kinda take it or leave it, she doesn’t annoy me, so that’s always a plus. Jansen is hilarious in every sense of the word, and is by far my favorite so far. And then there’s Cooke and Mack. So great; both of them — I don’t really ever recall playing as children in any game. But my selective memory is probably kicking in right this second.

I’m not really gonna speak on the visuals, it’s on AAA caliber. Probably due to the UE3 engine, but I think that it may be selling the talent of Mistwalker Studios a little short. What I do blame UE3 for are the oft load times, and when I say oft I mean “Shitfuck, it’s loading again! Time to go make dinner.”

The audio definitely struck a chord, though. From the voice acting which is spot on with every single character thus far and Mr. Uematsu has definitely not lost his touch — his compositions, while very FF derivative, are still nothing short of great. I’m looking into finding the OST, that’s how good.

There was a depressing sequence of events that went down near the end of Disk 1, won’t really go into specifics for fear of spoilers, but it is by far the most emotional moment I’ve ever experienced in any game ever. Even teared up a bit. Shut up.

I’m not sure if that whole gaming renaissance was me being late to the party, or if it was just my homecoming party to all the games that I was in complete, utter love with games that were (or might as well have been) in my childhood. Either way, I’m quite content with being a gamer right this second.

I know I’ve stirred up the pot when it comes to cutscenes, but as you may have heard, I’ve been playing the MGS series and a JRPG, both notorious for cutscenes. And although they are quite verbose, to say the least, I was quite content with sitting through them. Even though they were cutscenes I still found myself being perfectly content throughout. Guess I don’t detest them as much as I thought I did, even though I would much rather have embedded narrative, instead of taking a break from gameplay and watching a movie. But that’s beside the point. The point is that I enjoyed them, regardless of length and occurrence.

And since fortunately my break wasn’t just games, I was able to hang with friends and meet new people.

For the most part, I was falling asleep during the wee hours of the morning and waking up in the early afternoon, was either up playing games until my eyes hurt or until whoever I was speaking to would decide that they’d like to go to bed. Go figure. A lot of the week was spent talking to Cindy — Update: she’s still awesome. Except for on Friday, for reasons I won’t get into.

On Friday we decided to hang out at a local mall, The Falls. It was between semi-fun and fun. But regardless, it beat a night just by myself. She brought a few of her friends; David and Kirsten. The only real way to describe them altogether is interesting.

As they were making a video blog (at the Apple store) some random guy decided to walk right by and intrude. When we inquired about said random guys’ name, he simply replied Captain Jack Sparrow. So, like any other fun loving group we humored him, and proceeded to interview him. I’ll see if I can convince Cindy to upload that ish on YouTube.

After that meeting of meetings Cindy had to go, and I soon after.

The next thing I know it’s Saturday, and I’m playing Lost Odyssey for entirely too many hours, then decide to toss it off for a little while because there was some girl named Andrea Gabriela Lopez begging for attention, and thus far, I’m pretty content with having put LO aside to talk to her, because so far, she’s pretty cool. She’s fairly entertaining and she gets me. She’s also quite forgiving, as I woke her up at 1am, because my brother had just woken me to inform me of his whereabouts and I decided that I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep. So I decided I’d call her, and she was surprisingly not mad, and even more surprisingly she humored me and talked until we decided that we should at least get an hour or two of sleep before the day begins.

I lied.

It was actually just mostly her, because I know that I can function on E, so I felt really guilty for keeping her up because she had like a billion things to do, and wake up at 5:15, as opposed to my 6:30.

So, yeah. This is a semi-apology for what I put her through. I’m Sorry! Kinda. A little.

Now. Back to Lost Odyssey.

While casually browsing what I like to refer to as the ‘internets’, I was reminded of two things that I prefer to not be reminded of.

The first of which was GTA4. Dear god, April 29 is so close, yet so far away. I’ve been avoiding coverage as best as I can, I know that Rockstar is gonna pull it through and set another bar for open-world games.

The other was Starcraft II, which will be released god-knows-when (fingers crossed by year’s end!). And it reminded me of how much I suck at RTS; I think I’ve figured out why, I truly have no idea how to micromanage nor multitask the multitude of different things that are can be happening at any given part of the battlefield at any given time.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying either. This past weekend I started up Company of Heroes and Command and Conquer 3. And wow, these are two completely different animals; Company of Heroes is very tactical and strategy based rather than a strict rock, paper, scissors balance. Which is pretty much the opposite of what Command and Conquer 3 is — don’t get me wrong, it still requires strategy for high-level play, but in comparison to CoH, it’s much more attrition based.

So yeah, I started the campaign’s for both games in hopes of getting a bearing on things. And I’m not gonna laugh at the FMV sequences in C&C3, not because I like them, but because they’ve gotten enough of that.

The whole bearing-grabbing thing didn’t work out so well. I got stuck about 4-5 missions in for both games. I’m gonna try really hard to not get discouraged and hope that something in my head will ‘click’ and I’ll magically become a decent RTS player. Mostly since it’s really easy to get discouraged, since a 45 minute to multi-hour long games will be rendered useless in a matter of seconds. Naturally you’ll think “Well, what the fuck? What was I doing all that time?” I’ll try and tough it out, though.

Following up from last week, I think I’m nearing the climax and it’s still consistently scaring the hell out of me. This game absolutely gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, I’m considering playing through F.E.A.R., or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl because although these acronym’s of game titles may not be as visceral as the hand-to-hand combat in Condemned 2: Bloodshot, I hear they’re pretty damn scary.

And since I’m still a total wuss, I’m sure I can be the judge of that. But I think like Nick Suttner something to the effect of, “I just don’t generally like the feeling of tension while playing games.” on the 3/21 1UP Yours — I can’t say disagree.

For my English midterm we had to write two potential colleges, two potential careers, or one of each. I went with the latter, this is just a copy/paste of the work that I  did on it, I should have a blog proper incoming by the end of the week, if not by the next; it’s midterm week.

With senior year fast approaching it would be beneficial to make myself aware of what my future may possibly hold, this includes looking into potential schools to further extend my education in hopes of attaining something that is worthy of being called a career.

Being the realist that I am, I know I’m not going to be eligible for some big university that would be my first choice like UF, USC, or UC Berkeley. To be honest, chances are that I’m going to end up at Miami-Dade College – most likely the Kendall campus since, according to MapQuest, it’s only 22 miles away from home. The main reason I’m being realistic with this is the cost; if I were to choose UF, it’d cost around $15,740 as opposed to Miami-Dade’s $725. Not to mention my grades, they’re not the worst ever, but I don’t believe that they’re up to par with an average big-name university’s standards, it probably doesn’t help that I’m the complete opposite of an athlete either.

While attending whatever school I end up at, I’m fairly certain I’m going to major in either literature or journalism. I have reasons for wanting to do both, and wanting to pick neither — I know I’m going into a specific form of journalism, which I’ll bring up later, and it would benefit me to have a strong base of literature, that way while writing I have a variety of words and phrases I can pick and choose from with relative ease – but knowing myself, I’d hate the class because I don’t enjoy reading novels unless I vest enough interest in them, to make myself do it. As for majoring in journalism, it would definitely help as I’d already know how to obtain information, act when necessary, and behave as expected – but they may not be necessary because of the specificity of the field that I’ve chosen.

As far as anything extra-curricular, I don’t really see it happening as I’ll be busy dealing with the rest of life. The main reason I’d want something in California is almost exclusively because of the possibility of an internship at a specific place, but for the mere reason of cost, I don’t believe it’ll end up happening.

The specific form of journalism that I spoke of before is covering video games. It’s something that I’m passionate toward for a multitude of reasons that vary from sentimental to just to the pure love that I have for the medium. I’ve been seriously pursuing it for the past two years or so and it’s recently come to fruition. I am now a regular contributor to Ripten.com, a website that covers video games in a variety of forms – lately, I’ve been the news guy, but because of this whole midterm deal, I had to put that and the review I was writing up, on hold. Depending on how it all works out, by the end of this month I may begin to receive pay for the work that I’m doing. By and large, the significance of my career won’t have an effect on many people’s daily lives, unless they are gamers.

Eventually, if everything goes as planned, I’ll be an editor in some form or fashion of a print magazine or a website. Although a degree isn’t necessary, it’s absolutely beneficial. If it comes down to a person that can write well without a degree, and a person that can’t write well with a degree; they’ll go with the former, rather than the latter. Experience is valued moreso than a degree, but it’s not useless by any means.

Obviously, this isn’t a 9-to-5 job, hours aren’t ever set in stone; you write what you need to and have it in by deadline. Print magazines have very firm deadlines that vary from weekly to monthly, while online venues have very small daily deadlines, for example getting a news story up as quickly as possible to beat out the competition.

Although, most offices are in California considering the state of the internet as it is now, it’s perfectly normal and efficient to have different writers and editors in different parts of the world — my editor-in-chief lives in Pennsylvania, while my managing editor lives in California, along with a total of four regular contributors that write out of the UK and send it in.

At first many writers freelance for a multitude of companies, and if they are looking for a more permanent position at a given company they’d talk to the editor-in-chief (or whoever may be in charge) about becoming a more critical part to the effort. At which point, they’d achieve the position of an editor; it’s really situational most times. But common titles are managing editor, executive editor, previews editor, and reviews editor.

Obviously, income differs from position to position – and although I couldn’t find any solid figures for that an average editor would make, it’s nothing amazing, but it’s enough to make a decent living on. Those that choose to freelance exclusively, it makes their future fairly uncertain as the pay relies on the basis of how often you’re needed and the pay usually varies from every article that you write.

Although I am as unsure as a person can be about what life may hold college-wise, I’m very sure as to what I’m going to make a living off of, as I’m determined and will do anything to achieve the aforementioned position of an editor. Even now, as I work with Ripten, if nothing else, I’m building a portfolio that exemplifies what I am capable of as a writer, and I believe it’s enough to carry me to where I need to go.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot. I’m really liking this game, so far. But, there’s one problem — it’s scary, and I’m a total wuss.

Since beginning C2:B, I’ve been scared shitless on a pretty regular basis, and through the use of the transitive property I’ve been spouting out more unnecessarily profane sayings that may make small children and the elderly cry, pretty regularly as well.

The sound design is absolutely amazing. There were moments that I had to stop moving and look around to make sure everything is safe because I thought I heard something. Now, that’s not too special, but when it’s accomplished without visual hints or anything and exclusively by sound, now that’s special.

And although the sound plays a big part in the atmosphere of the game. Visuals are as dark and gritty as you’d expect. The atmosphere mostl get its job done by pure design — for example, at some point you’ll see a crazed bum run across a hall in front of you, and what it does is make you aware of his prescence, and if you’re like me at all, it’ll make you think twice about going down that certain hall. And to me, that’s the very essence of a horror game.

Although, arguably the biggest addition to the atmosphere is the sound from the voice acting to just a tv sitting in a room emmitting white noise, and everything in between — it all comes together to form one cohesive piece of entertainment that has managed to continuously scare me for the three hours that I’ve spent with it.

There was one specific moment that I won’t spoil, but after it ocurred I just had to get up and walk away from my TV.

It wasn’t a cheap “BOO!” scare either, the game succeded in making me feel paranoid by making me genuinely believe that there was something in that room that was making a concerted effort to fuck with me right before killing me and making me aware of it, throughout.

And thus far, I’ve liked the little CSI sequences that break-up all of the killing, which may I mention is the absolute best impleminatation of first-person melee I’ve ever seen.

The real longevity of the game will be determined with how well they can break up the scares as well as introduce new ones, because the scariest part of that which is unknown, s the fact that it is unknown. Once you know what it actually is and when you get to the point in which scares are easily predictable, once you see/experience something in full it ceases to be quite so scary.

And to tie-up some loose ends: Lost is still awesome (surprise!), DMC4 lost me halfway through — fucking backtracking, and Cindy and I are feeling much better.

Back to procrastinatin’.

Just as soon as I hop out of my figurative week-long sickbed (i.e. bedroom bed) like a dog returning to its vomit, here I am to unapologetically rant and rave about anything that my thoughts stumble upon as I type.

Throughout the week of freedom from the stress and responsibilities, you’d think that I’d totally go on some unforgivable gaming marathon, right? Not so much, there wasn’t really much to play. I’m more or less all World of Warcrafted out for the time being, and Condemned 2: Bloodshot wouldn’t be out for another week. It also didn’t help that I was far too drained (damn antibiotics) to do anything by mid-week.

I tried going back through Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Call of Duty 4, BioShock, and Portal; each time I found myself not really wanting to play anymore, which then led to me questioning why. I then came to the conclusion and revelation that I don’t like going experiencing a game more than once. I absolutely loved Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 4, BioShock, and Portal the first time through, but as hard as I tried I couldn’t bring myself to be entertained by any of them.

Maybe it’s that initial sense of enwonderment that can’t be had the second time through or maybe it’s the feeling of being dropped and engrossed into a place that I couldn’t dream up if I tried and the genuinely unique experiences that are had that don’t feel quite as great the second time through. That’s my games-in-depth thing for the week, I guess.

I’m not sure, but I guess the point is that my week sucked for games and it’s takes the crown when it comes to missed opportunities. However, it then kicked into high gear when it came to passive entertainment; movies and TV. Before last week, I honestly can’t remember the last movie I saw, but I got around to watching a few, Hitman, Juno, Fight Club, and The Mist. Nothing much to speak of besides Juno, which may I mention has the most amazingly unlistenable intro song ever. It grew on me, mostly because of one reason which I’ll get to later.

One of the things in my mind is a 6am wake up call from a little thing called reality so that life as usual may resume.

I say resume for those of you that may not have noticed (see what I did there?), I wasn’t around last week. And it wasn’t for lack of time, there was plenty of that considering I did nothing but veg out and wait to get better all week long. For all one of you (did you catch it this time?) that are wondering I’m not gonna disclose exactly what was wrong as it’s not the most pleasant of thoughts.

ANYWAYS.

Kinda like a live-blog, I’ll attempt to insert the happenings of my day as I live it:

6:56am - Waking up this morning I felt like today was different, the good kind of different. Woke-up-with-total-confidence-regardless-of-anything different, let’s hope for the rest of the day will follow suit.

8:59am - Being stuck in traffic for no real reason besides God unleashing his wrath by making me late on my first day back from ‘vacation’. So yeah, I was late to English, everyone stared in amazement. I guess they all thought I was dead or something. Miss Pez (teacher) went a little insane with some bunny that makes a boing sound when you press a button…you had to be there. Although, she was forgiven, mostly because she was generous when it came to lightening my load on a weeks-worth of make-up work. You rock, Pez!

9:57am - Video productions — didn’t really film, Rini and I kinda just bounced ideas back and forth on what our next project should be about and ended up just grabbing a tapeless camera and going for a morning stroll around the school. Choice quote with no context from me “It’s kinda breezy out here, I kinda wish I was wearing a skirt.”

11:25am - Lunch flew by, mostly because I was off make-up quiz for English, and well, it always kinda flies by.

12:25pm - Exactly an hour later I find myself surrounded by numbers. Math class, conveniently enough we have a substitute. Time for sleep.

1:39pm - Journalism, Ty (my partner in stupidities) and I were graced with the opportunity of editing articles that can only be described as literary masterpieces (sarcasm, much?) another choice quote I managed to mutter throughout the whole editing rigmarole was “How do you kill that what which is already dead?” After today, I think I’m gonna start putting effort in making myself more quotable.

2:32pm - Gah! I’m free! In retrospect, today was a good day, laughter was a constant theme throughout the day, along with a whole lot of not worrying about what others are thinking. I should see about having these more often.

And the reason that I spoke of earlier, the reason that a totally unlistenable song that I’d normally turn off grew on me and the reason I put off watching my now second favorite episode of Lost, The Constant (the first being Tricia Tanaka is Dead, but that’s beside the point) until Monday afternoon is actually a person.

Her name rhymes with Mindy and she may very well be among the most amazing people that I ever had the pleasure of getting to know. I’d fully insert a picture of her right around here, but I don’t know how I’d feel about all you fools ogling my goodies if some random person posted a picture of me on the internets, I follow that ‘do unto others’ thing.

Even though, neither words nor pictures would do her justice, inside or out. Shit, now I sound like some love-sick puppy but that is false, sir!

I’ve just really enjoyed conversations that I’ve had with this person to the point of me being awake at 3am, falling asleep mid-conversation but not wanting to. I found myself stalling both of us from leaving when either of us would have to. As you may or may not know, I have trust issues because of reasons that I’m not gonna go into now. But, I found myself trusting her and confiding in her with things that in most cases I would only divulge to people proving their worth in my eyes.

It bothered me for a little while, as I didn’t understand how I could bring down my perpetual guard to a point of vulnerability to someone who is ostensibly a total stranger.

I don’t know what that means, or if it even has meaning. I just know that every time I speak with this person, a lot of the time I have no clue what to say, so I just say everything, and end up looking like a total loser that talks entirely too much.

Hope you’re feeling better, Cindy.

Ever felt by yourself, even while surrounded by a group of 30+ people? How about the whole world going 60 MPH, while you’re stuck at 5? Yep, that’s me.

And that’s our emo segment of today’s blog.

I’m dead tired. Was up until 4am last night writing for school for the yearbook. Obviously, I wasn’t working too hard and decided to go discover some music.

First, I found some band called The Maine, not really all that amazing, but they did do a cover of Akon’s I Wanna Love You, some of the lyrics were out of place. But it’s MUCH better than the original, even if it is a giant practical joke on me.

After them, I found another band called Every Avenue. At first, they weren’t too great, but after listening to them throughout the day — they’re pretty damn good. Definitely worth a listen, if you’re into the same kind of music as me. You know, the awesome kind.

The anticipation of tonight’s Lost, which I’ll watch online tomorrow because I’m HD-spoiled and we don’t get ABC-HD. Speaking of which, do you know how hard it is to avoid Lost spoilers for 24 hours!? Really, really, really, really, really hard. That’s a lot of really’s.

Whoa, I veered off course there. The point I was trying to make was how dumb it was getting and how amazingly quick the writers can pull me back in. Just a note for non-Lost junkies you may wanna skip a few paragraphs and see if I’ve finished blabbing.

That asian ghostbuster annoys me. Why does he need a damn heavy-duty Black and Decker vaccume to talk to the dead? And how do they parachute out of a helicopter, especially at such a low altitude? And countless other fuck ups that could’ve been solved with common sense (Charlie’s death) that I don’t have the time or stomach for right now.

And the part that annoys me the most is when they air episodes like “The Economist“, it pulls me right back in. I’m not gonna go into too many details for fear of spoilers, but it was a damn intelligent twist, one that I figured out almost immediately, I was just wrong about the most important part of the twist — the manipulator. Looking back, it’s a little obvious.

And through this episode we’re given one more member of the Oceanix Six. You know who it is if you watched it, and I have two solid guesses at who the two that make it off are, I’m thinking Sawyer and Locke, or Sun and Jin. Not based on anything but my less than cognitive reasoning.

It’s been a long day and I think I’m gonna kill it here, there’s a couch that looks like it’ll perfectly contour to my body and I think I’ve earned myself a nap.

Yes, really. No game stuff today, even though yesterday Microsoft dropped a few bombs. I’d yap on, but I’d rather sleep.