Sea Change?

I've been back from Iceland for a little while now, but I've also been exceedingly busy and barely gaming since then. I have managed, however, to play through all of the cool new demos on XBOX Live. Strangehold takes the Max Payne formula, transplants it into a Hong Kong action movie, and really brings it to the next level; I'm definitely looking forward to the final product. Skate is a more realistic take on professional skateboarding while still maintaining a great level of casual fun. Eternal Sonata is something I'm really looking forward to playing, as the graphics are gorgeous and the dynamics of the battle system are really refreshing after the last few RPGs I've been through. Beautiful Katamari didn't seem like anything particularly new, but then it was a pretty short demo. BioShock was beautiful, fantastically atmospheric, and just a whole lot of fun. There's no denying that it is essentially another System Shock game, but really, that's not a bad thing after so many years :) In the Arcade, neither Space Giraffe nor Street Trace: NYC really did anything for me; they're not bad, but I doubt I'll ever buy them... They are pretty though.

While I was out of the country, the vast majority of my time gaming was spent with Lumines and Final Fantasy on my PSP. Lumines is Lumines; if you haven't played it yet, you should; if it doesn't grab you at first, stick with it... It will. The Final Fantasy remake is really solid, and I was having a whole lot of fun with it... Until I ventured into the Earth Gift Shrine, an optional dungeon that was added to the DS and PSP remakes. Now, perhaps I just suck at RPGs, or perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but I'm in the final room, all of my characters are level 26 and well-equipped, and I can't defeat any of the enemies or find any exits aside from the ones behind the aforementioned enemies whom I cannot seem to defeat. FAQs haven't been much help, but then I'm trying to avoid them (I like finishing games on my own). The game hasn't been touched since returning to Canada.

Moving on, I think I may be installing Windows Vista on my main system in the next few days. With Microsoft's recent release of the Vista compatibility and performance updates (which together cover most of the updates announced for early-2008's SP1), M-Audio's release of a FireWire series driver for 32-bit versions of Vista, and the ability to disable driver signature checking for RivaTuner (was always an option, even when I was bitching about software overclocking in Vista in the past), things are starting to come together nicely... I'll be back with more on this soon.