Upgrade

My third XT720 started sapping batteries and stopped connecting to the mobile network... Awesome. After trying my provider's third-party vendor, corporate store, head office, and warranty replacement centre, they finally let me upgrade to a Nexus S... It's pretty :)

I played through Uncharted last week, and it was fun, but nothing earth-shattering. The story got a little silly, the cover system was frustrating, the gunplay was kinda boring, and the jumping controls were too loose... Not exactly fantastic in a game primarily comprised of cover-based shooting and jumping puzzles. I did enjoy the dialogue though. Anyway, I'm well into Uncharted 2 now, and while the camera and scripted events are hugely improved and supremely impressive, the rest of the game feels about the same... Naughty Dog may have peaked at the first Jak and Daxter game.

Back On The Scene

New acquisitions:

• 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand (360)
• Metroid: Other M (Wii)
• Need For Speed: Nitro (Wii)
• Chronicles Of Pern: Dragon Riders (DC)
• Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (PS)
• Pandemonium! (PS)
• Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (TGCD)
• Dark Seed (PC)
• Starship Titanic (PC)

I've only had time to sit down with Legend Of Heroes, Mortal Kombat Mythologies, Need For Speed, and Pandemonium! so far, and while I'm pretty happy with all of them, there're different reasons behind each...

Dragon Slayer: Legend Of Heroes seems to be a pretty straightforward Japanese RPG from Falcom, and their Ys series has me on a bit of a Falcom kick. Considering that Trails In the Sky (the sixth Legend Of Heroes game) was just released in North America for PSP, I thought I'd look into its roots with the only other English release in the series; it was a nice surprise to discover that Faxanadu (NES) and Sorcerian (PC) are also part of the Dragon Slayer series... Yeah, there're over 25 games if you count all of the sub-series :) Ooh, and I noticed an allusion to the 1984 Bruce Cockburn song "Lovers In A Dangerous Time" in Legend Of Heroes! So the pop-culture references of the recent Falcom translations (e.g lyrics from Hall and Oates' "Maneater" in one of the PSP Ys games) is apparently a bit of a tradition...

Anyway, Mortal Kombat Mythologies is friggin' hard. Interesting game with some really fun sequences, but jumping puzzles and limited lives 'n continues were a very bad idea.

Need For Speed: Nitro is fun, and so far totally worth the $8 I spent on it.

Pandemonium! is just as awesome as I remembered; fantastic platformer.

Death

Been busy; released a new CD with my band; that was prolly the biggest time sink.

Anyway, I've finished Ys I & II Chronicles. It was great fun; reminiscent of Half-Minute Hero, which, I guess, is therefore reminiscent of Ys Book I & II ;) That brings me up to speed on the English releases of the Ys series... And I want more. Here's hoping someone ports and translates Ys IV and V soon!

My 360 RROD'd... Gonna buy a new one; might splurge and get the Kinect bundle in anticipation of Double Fine's new Sesame Street game. Was almost done Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood when it went.

Seriously considering tracking-down an iPad to play Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

Explored m0n0wall and pfSense as router solutions at work.

What else is new... Stumbled across a copy of Guardian Heroes for SEGA Saturn, but the owner of the shop didn't want to sell it to me because it was in such poor condition.

Oh! I'm on my third XT720 and second SIM card; all under warranty... I still dig the phone, especially considering what I paid for it.