Goo!

So Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipce Of Darkness - Episode Two is out today, and World Of Goo is out on Greenhouse... I know what I'm buying when I get home :) Now, I know that I've bitched about Greenhouse in the past, but that was more about maintaining multiple accounts with differing rules across various platforms than it was about that service in particular. In fact, I prefer Greenhouse to any other digital distribution service. GameTap's subscription model doesn't sit well with me at all, Steam's requirement of a constant connection seems unreasonable to me, and XBOX Live's platform lock-in isn't exactly ideal (will my XBLA games be playable elsewhere in the future, or will I have to keep my 360 hooked up?). Greenhouse gives me a key, asks me to activate once, and that's it. Word up.

Crisis Core is fucking awesome. It's got a top-notch Japanese RPG story (a.k.a. drama was transformed into cheese during translation), gorgeous graphics, and way too much to do (a.k.a. grinding). Once I came to grips with the randomness of the DMW (which controls limit breaks, summons, and levelling) and really got into materia fusion, the scale of the game became much clearer. These design decisions would quite simply be idiotic on any other platform, but on a portable system, they lend themselves so well to a combination of casual and marathon play that one can't help but appreciate what the game's designers have accomplished. Crisis Core is right up there with LocoRoco, and The Dracula X Chronicles as a wonderfully sublime experience that is unique to the PSP.

Oh, and that new Linksys router... Yeah. It's strong enough that my 802.11g SMC PCI wireless card can maintain a weak connection without a range extender, but another computer that uses an 802.11g Linksys SpeedBooster PCI card can't detect a thing. The D-Link range extender that worked fine with the SMC and Asanté routers doesn't seem to fare so well with this Linksys router. Grrr. I don't really feel like spending $75 on a Linksys 802.11n adapter just to see if that makes a difference.

One last thing, I found a Neo Geo Pokcet link cable for under $20 today, so I picked that up... Now I just need to find another NGP to link to :)