Apparently, this was my week to discover what a great big baby I am when it comes to horror games. As of last time, I had finished Dead Space, but not yet started Dead Space 2; right now, I’ve played through Dead Space: Extraction and Dead Space: Ignition in their entirety, and have put about two hours into Dead Space 2 so far. It’d probably be more, but I won’t play it after dark. IT’S TOO SCARY. Continue reading →
Confessions 2011: Killer Thriller (2/11-2/21)
Confessions 2011: Domo Arigato (1/25-2/10)
I finished P3P. In three weeks. Yeah, I know. This is what unemployment can do to you, folks. Since I went into such excruciating detail about it last time, I won’t subject you to that again; all I’ll say is that some of the social links get pretty weird towards the end if you choose the female main character, particularly Aigis. Um… play the game to find out what I’m talking about. Yeah.
With that particular free-time-sucker taken care of, I actually made leaps and bounds of progress in other games this time around. Who knew you could actually get things done when you’re not obsessively playing 70-hour JRPGs? I certainly didn’t. Continue reading →
Confessions 2011: Feels Like the First Time (1/13-1/24)
I should preface this post with a warning: if you’re sick and tired of hearing about Persona (and I could understand how that might be the case, what with roughly the first six months of the podcast being filled with Elaine and me gushing semi-incoherently about social links and drug-dealing foxes), then you might want to close your browser now. Go ahead, I won’t judge you. And I’ll only cry a little.
*sniff*
Confessions 2011: Here I Go Again, On My Own (1/1-1/12)
Yeah, that’s right. I made a Whitesnake reference. YOU LOVE IT.
I don’t do well writing straight-up reviews, not because I necessarily have trouble with the form or the content, but more because I just don’t play things in a timely fashion 99% of the time. Could I post a review of Metroid Prime? Sure, but who would really care? I mean…. Elaine might, but only so she could monitor me for any negative terminology and soundly beat me if any showed up. (I….kid? I think?) However, since I do have a project–a resolution, if you will–in progress, I’m resurrecting the ol’ journal-style update system so that I have something pushing me along besides my list and you have something to read and scoff at when I start lagging behind… or just get stuck on Persona forever, which is what pretty much happened this week. Surprise! Continue reading →
The Great Backlog Clearification of 2011
I’m afraid this isn’t going to be a very interesting post.
I say this because I’ve made this declaration before…. or, well, a version of it, anyway. It’s no secret to anyone that I have a bit of a backlog problem. Everyone has flaws, okay? I’ve even tried, on this very site, methods of spurring myself to get a handle on things, but it generally seems to fall apart after a while. In the interest of driving down that very scary number, then, and in the spirit of the New Year that is upon us, I’m going to try something a little different, and I invite any and all closet backloggers out there to play along with me.
Five Things: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
I had what might very properly be called a love/hate relationship with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and given that the rest of this article is likely to get a little ranty, I think it’s important to note that there is a “love” part nestled in there as well (see it? It’s right before the backslash). I’ve always sort of had a soft spot for Castlevania games in general; I didn’t even think Curse of Darkness and Lament of Innocence were all that bad. Admittedly, though, the series does seem to be at its best when it’s concentrating on the side-scrolling, 2d style that brought it to prominence to begin with, so even though it passed through the hands of the World’s Most Adorable Man, Hideo Kojima, I couldn’t help having a few reservations from the beginning, which… well, they were partially justified. Continue reading →
Five Things: Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep
The Kingdom Hearts series is on, in the US at least, its fifth iteration (six if you count Re:Chain separately… I don’t) across four systems, with another title scheduled to release in January, a 3DS installment already planned, and…maybe? Kingdom Hearts 3 in the works. (That last one is just wishful thinking, but a girl can dream.) Expansive though that is, it doesn’t even approach the plethora of titles in the Final Fantasy series; however, Kingdom Hearts has something they don’t: a consistent, complex mythology. Aside from X-2, direct sequels aren’t really something Final Fantasy does, and while there are certain features that carry over, echo each other, and/or relate in some way, by and large, when you play a Final Fantasy game, you can be pretty sure that you’re getting a new storyline each time–different characters, different setting, the whole nine. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that one series is superior to the other, it does draw an important distinction between them, and gives Squenix fans a reason to distinguish one from the other (other than that one has Disney characters, obviously).
Hospital for iPods: Milliamp review
I can’t be the only one to find themselves in this situation. My iPod, a 30GB 5th generation black iPod Video, bought in May of 2006, had developed a problem – the headphone socket only producing sound via the left channel – due to nothing more than normal wear and tear, and it was naturally long since out of warranty. However, since it otherwise worked well, was still a high enough capacity for my needs, and had all the features I still required, I was loath to scrape together the significant amount of scratch for a new one. Apple, the manufacturer of the iPod line (if you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so), famously regards its ubiquitous MP3 player as a disposable commodity and the design of every variant precludes so much as changing the battery without physically dismantling the device. So what is one to do? Why, turn to people who have made extending the life of treasured iPods their mission, of course. Continue reading →
