Reviews!
I haven't been doing much reading. Almost finished with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Slowly working through Borges' Collected Fictions. Haven't yet wrapped up my William Hope Hodgson anthology. You'll mostly find video games below.
Video Games
Video Games
- Brain Age (DS): Wow! A brain-stimulation game, which has you performing short concentration tasks each day. In just a week I've noticed my basic math skills are improving (I'm a terrible adder and subtracter). It also comes with a bunch of Sudoku gameboards, with a nice stylus interface. So yeah, now I've learned Sudoku.
- Devil May Cry 3 (PS2): Everything that Devil May Cry 2 should have been, and more. A complex fighting system that I haven't even begun to get good at. It ups the ridiculousness ante early on, when Dante has a rocket launcher fired at him and instead of dodging, he jumps onto it and surfs his way to safety.
- Drill Dozer (GBA): An excellent sidescrolling platformer with a unique feature: Your vehicle has a drill that can operate machinery, fight bosses, dig through walls, and more. Made by the Pokemon development team, which means you get sharp, cute graphics, and solid gameplay. Plus a rumble feature! Highly recommended.
- Galactic Civilizations 2 (PC): This was a fifty dollar purchase, with the justification being that I wouldn't have to buy any more games for over a year. I'm a month in and it's holding up so far. It's Civilization in space, on steroids. My favorite parts are the multiple victory conditions and the fully buildable spaceships. For example, in the my most recent game, I noticed my enemies were equipping their ships with beam weapons, so I countered by building ships with shields. I finally won when I conquered their home system, they surrendered their remaining empire to me, and I allied with all the other alien races. Recommended for any 4X game buffs.
- Metroid: Prime Hunters (DS): A FPS for the DS! Unfortunately, using the "mouse-look" feature with my thumb cramps up my hand. But it's totally worth it. The graphics are very sharp; it looks like the developers pushed the little DS as hard as they could. Online play is great, though I would have liked more rankings (you only get ranked between one and three) when automatically creating matches. My only gripe with single player is that, as far as I can tell, there are only four worlds and they reuse bosses.
- Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge (PS2): A terrible, terrible game with beautiful, beautiful graphics. Playing it is like pulling teeth, and it's nearly worth the amazing visuals you get. I put in about 10-30 minutes a month on this one, while
my wife watches.
- A History of Iniquity (Jorges Luis Borges): Borges gives you these authentic-seeming recountings of villains' lives, and only with some research did I discover that he invented most of it.
- Aragami: A Japanese film by the director of Versus. Two samurai must fight in one room. That's right, the movie takes place in only one room. It's my favorite kind of movie: Cool swordfighting, great personalities, and the tone of a solid short story.
- Thank You for Smoking: A solid story that doesn't let up or get too sappy. Recommended.