Mind and Crumpet

After three weeks without internet in my apartment, I have learned an important lesson.

It is - and you must listen closely - it is that you must, whenever possible, read the instructions.

I could have really used that twenty-five dollars.

Sigh.

In any case, you may have noticed the tag, which refers to the fact that I finally picked up Mirror's Edge and - well, it wasn't everything I was hoping it would be. No spoilers after the cut, but there is a great deal of pretentious niche-gamer rage.

Goddamnit, DICE, you make all these promises, you get my hopes up, I invest my unwavering faith in your commitment to making a new and exciting IP, and ( you pull this shit. )

I'm going to go play Sands of Time again to mitigate the rage.

Goddamnit.

...At least Fallout 3 is awesome. Pretty much exactly what I'd hope a 3D Falloutverse would look like and full of care, detail and love. I might talk about that later; it'll be nice to not be complaining about something.

*Oh god. After this, the new Prince of Persia game had better cure fucking cancer or I just can't take it any more.

Some thoughts on the new Prince of Persia E3 trailer:

...Am I the only one who thinks it kinda looks like Ico as developed by Square-Enix? Seriously, look at it. Nimble hero with flappy tunic and ethereal lady side-kick dressed in white with added unnecessary costume bits.

Which is not to say I don't like it. No indeed. I sort of want to lick it a little bit, actually. Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have achieved genuinely beautiful cel-shading!

Fawning out of the way, Ubisoft, you guys had better really sell the relationship between the Prince and Elika. I fucking mean this, Partner AI has apparently become the hip new thing and not a whole lot of games have gotten it right due to the fact that they don't make the Partner someone you want to be partnered with. Farah was awesome - for the first game, at least - and I expect you to live up to the example set by a game that was released five goddamn years ago.

No, I haven't gotten over Assassin's Creed yet. Thank you for asking.

Sigur Ros, huh? Neat! Now can somebody please tell me which song it is? ...Yes, I admit to being a sucker for ludicrously graceful violence set to pretty music. Don't judge me.

( Games I Did Not Expect to Adore This Year: Mass Effect. )

Speaking of things that make me jump for joy, I have renewed my attempt to actually finish Final Freaking Fantasy XII, and Balthier is far more awesome than you will ever be. I knew I loved him from roughly the moment he opened his mouth. If he and Garrett ever were in the same room with each other, I, well, I'd probably be left a trembling heap from their combined withering scorn, but by god I'd be the happiest heap that ever there was.

(Fran and Viktoria can sit by and discuss being badass non-human-yet-hawt chicks teamed up with wisecracking criminals. ...IF THIS GAME KILLS FRAN I WILL BE EXTREMELY PISSED. DON'T KILL FRAN. THE SUM TOTAL OF HAWT IN THE UNIVERSE WOULD BE DEALT A FATAL BLOW.)

I love how completely, sublimely unimpressed Fran and Balthier are by Vaan. It's beautiful.

I don't think I'm very far yet! I just rescued totally-not-the-princess and am faffing around attempting to escape the dungeons and making fun of Vaan. The music is irritating and the combat system is strange - I get the feeling it'll open up as the game goes on, but I just came out of Mass Effect and its RPG Combat That Is Actually Fun, so it's taking some getting used to.

The writing, or localization, I guess, is excellent, however. I think I'd play on just for it.

Of course I didn't buy the strategy guide just for the art book that comes with it. What do you take me for, some kind of obsessive?

I bought the art book. The strategy guide was just a detail. Mmmm, pretty arhts.

Before I go on, you guys should know that I'll be stating outright some stuff that's only been hinted at in the advertising material. Pretty much all of it is easily guessed, but if you haven't been following it as obsessively as I have and want to go in clean, ( you should probably stop now. )

Completed Memory Blocks: 3

Combat deaths: 6

Drowning deaths: 19

Unnecessary Leaps of Faith: 10

Guards gratuitously punched: 4

Snarky remarks regarding A.I. that's...not: 6

"Wheeeeee!" count: 11

Repetitions of Altair's lines in Garrett impression to see if it makes them more awesome: 3

Attempts made to blend in real life by pulling up my hood and assuming Altair's 'prayerful' stance: 7

Failed attempts: 7




*Context is for the weak.

I finished System Shock 2! :D Seems a good a milestone as any to break my silence, which was, incidentally, a silence induced by real life kicking my ass. In no particular order: happy belated birthday memlu, may you grace the world with your fabulousness for many years to come; Labyrinth is one of the most hilariously eighties things I've ever seen; Bowie-crotch; my brother moved to Adelaide and will be sorely ignored; The Gunslinger is a surprisingly cool book and I no longer feel compelled to hate Stephen King on principle; Ratatouille, if bottled and sold, would rapidly outpace Prozac as an antidepressant; Bioshock Bioshock Bioshock! And, finally, the school holidays have begun and that apparently means my work needs me less. I haven't yet decided if I'm annoyed or pleased.

( Now to talk about System Shock 2. )

Hey, flist! What would be your opinion of an LGS-themed one sentence meme? Be honest with me here. Obsessive? Awesome? For god's sake, when am I going to shut up about these games? Stand forward and be counted, insect, no matter how frail your meat-body in comparison with my magnificence.

Some things!

Treasure Planet is an awesome movie and I have a giant girlcrush on Captain Amelia.

I am compiling a music post.

I reread Shade's Children. It's still incredibly depressing, but also fantabulous, and hell if I don't feel a terrible kind of pity for [SPOILER] at the end.

Today we went living-space hunting (or inspecting, really) in Brisbane. There were three kinds of units: A (roughly the size of shoeboxes), B (slightly larger than same) and C (perhaps as large as a very large bedroom). Problem: none of them had even remotely enough space for my books, and considering there's a Borders around the corner from which I bought three more, it's a big problem. Hmmm.

It was, however, very interesting inspecting the rooms that people lived in. A few were clearly Studentrooms and thus almost buried in, well, stuff, but one was incredibly, bleakly neat and another had a copy of The Secret on the shelf, at which I pointed and laughed. I'm a bad person.

I am further is System Shock 2, and still more thoroughly creeped out! (  More, and more spoilery, impressions: )

Also, my laptop now has SHODANface.

Hey dudes! You can blame a combination of work and my brother for my absence, because he gave me a copy of Canis Canem Edit (that's Bully to you non PAL region guys - they renamed it here for some damn stupid censorship reason). It's kind of like Grand Theft Auto, but set in a school, without the gratuitous death and with a protagonist who cannot yet drive.

The main character's name is James Hopkins (AKA 'Jimmy'), a boy who's mother has recently remarried to a rich fat old bastard. Jimmy does not approve, and has demonstrated his disapproval through actions that have gotten him expelled from seven successive schools. The last one he actually set fire to, and now every other school in the state refuses to take him - except for Bullsworth Academy, the toughest, harshest, most unashamedly cruel place of learning that is not in fact a military school (it tends to turn out lawyers and politicians). The aim of the game is to get through school without getting expelled and curry favour with the various cliques, through doing errands and the occasional burst of unmitigated violence.

There is something unexpectedly cathartic in beating the snot out of jocks.

But! I don't like it just for the beating. It's lots of fun (though not very deep), and there's a whole lot of brilliant dialogue and interesting characters. (Like Gary. God bless you, Gary, you strange and hilariously smarmy sociopath.) The music is excellent, and the art is nice.

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Rockstar game, but it's actually pretty cool. Fucking Rockstar.

(Also, I am sure many of you will be pleased by the fact that you can kiss both girls and boys for bonus health. It's okay, I am too. Also, I'll bet you my next paycheck that somebody, somewhere has written either Gary/Jimmy or Gary/Pete happy sparkly boysex. This knowledge saddens me.)

Also: BACO BACO I GOT YOUR PACKAGE! Your letter made me giggle and was actually not as rambly as the one I undoubtedly would have included, had I sent such a package. Kingdom Come does indeed have lovely art, but I only picked one Watchmen reference. Does that mean I have to hand in my geek license?

Yep, I finished Metal Age, and feel kinda depressed now that it's over. It was so cool having the whole game ahead of me.

( I sometimes wish I could hit 'erase' on my brain and play or read things all over again. )

Weirdest Glitch Encountered: Opening the door into a crypt and watching its slow, stately flight away into the sky.

Runner-up: Stabbing a Servant out of pity and wtf-ing over the spiral of red dots that swirled over the body. Uh. I'm not sure what happened there. It was pretty impressive, though.