I think I'm still having fun...

...But I do seem to be hijacking a lot of tanks in Prototype.

Prototype

Prototype is pretty cool. While it doesn't feel as fluid as Crackdown and it's very reminiscent of its spiritual predecessor, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Prototype still has a lot of good stuff to offer. The gameplay is nicely varied, the atmosphere is suitably gritty, and the story is vaguely intriguing so far (I'm about 1/3rd through)... It has managed to hold my attention.

Moving along...

Bioshock 2 got better toward the end; mostly because the characters developed at a quicker pace and the plot advanced accordingly. I was a little disappointed that a few things were hinted at but not explored at any real depth (e.g. your character's origins), and I ended-up in the same position I found myself at the end of the first game; overstocked and overpowered, ignoring 75% of my inventory, and rarely feeling particularly challenged. A very satisfying game overall, I'm still in love with the setting, though the scenario could use a bit of work. The first Bioshock is a must-play; the second one isn't quite as awesome.

So now I'm on to Prototype...

Bioshock 2 is unnecessary

I'm about half-way through Bioshock 2, and I'm feeling pretty bored and apathetic. It's like the first game, but less interesting because we've done it all before. There're new characters that I don't care about (except when I wonder why they're still in Rapture some ten years after it went to shit), new gameplay aspects that I don't enjoy (defend things against waves of idiots), and some pretty serious pacing issues (the story hasn't progressed in some time; just sayin')... Essentially, I feel like I'm grinding through something very pretty that I've already finished. It's an engaging and satisfying game, but it's just not doing anything special.

Prototype and F.E.A.R. 2 are up next.

Sudden Savant?

I accidentally finished Arkham Asylum. I sat down to put in an hour or so, and ended-up ploughing through to the end before I knew it. I dig the Bioshock-esque atmosphere and I love the character presentations, but I felt the story was a little rushed; a little too convenient at times... Fantastic concept though. Similarly, the voice-actors, while top-notch, were occasionally left to struggle with some pretty awfully clichéd lines. The final battle was just ridiculous and disappointing, but it's still a killer game, worth every penny spent on it and every minute spent with it, right on par with Assassin's Creed II... But I think I had more fun with Brütal Legend last year.

Within two days of spending some quality time with Street Fighter IV, I was able to finish the game on the hardest difficulty setting without using any continues... So I fired-up Super Street Fighter II Turbo to see if I'd somehow become a Street Fighter savant. I had not; SSF2T kicked my ass in short order.

Anyway, I bought a complete copy of Alien vs Predator for Jaguar (needed the box and overlays) and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for PS2 (only way to get SFA2 Gold), and I'm back into NHL 07 on PSP in a big way thanks to AronVad's new (and very impressive) roster update over at the GameFAQs forum.

Anticipation

I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter IV on the new PC, and they're both pretty amazing, despite both being out for quite a while now.

While Arkham Asylum is gorgeous, fluid, and just downright impressive, it's all a little overwhelming; I'm 20% in and just feeling a little lost... I'm sure it'll coalesce as the narrative progresses.

Street Fighter IV made sense right away, but now that I've taken the time to learn its new mechanics (so I'm not playing it like SSF2T anymore), I'm a lot more comfortable competing against other people. I've unlocked every character but Seth, and while Ken's still my go-to guy, I'm really liking Abel and I'm curious to see how Makoto (my other SF3 character) shapes-up when SSF4 is released.

Oh, and my FireWire Solo causes my USB controller to stop working when waking from sleep mode on the new PC :(

Assembly

Three builds in the past week:

1. 2.4GHz "Prescott" Pentium 4 on an ECS PM800-M2 with 1GB of 400MHz DDR RAM.
2. Core i7 930 on an ASUS P6X58D Premium with 6GB of 2000MHz DDR3 RAM.
3. 2.53GHz Pentium 4 "B" on an ASUS P4T533-C with 1GB of PC800 RDRAM.

I built the Prescott machine out of some parts of my own and parts that a client insisted were broken; it works, but the CPU fan is ridiculously noisy; it'll be used to power a basic surveillance system. The i7 is my new personal machine, and it's ridiculously fast. The motherboard has one of those nifty Linux-based virtual machines for instant-on access to the Internet 'n such, but it boots Windows almost as quickly, so there isn't much point to it once you get over the novelty. The Rambus machine is a nice surprise that I pieced-together out of spare parts from various broken machines I had lying around. That one's going to a friend of mine whose desktop died - bad sectors, burst capacitors.

Jeebus!

This thing is fast!

QTE FTW

Finished God Of War II. It was a lot of fun with just the right amount of challenge, though a little too cheesy at times. My only real complaint is with the quick-time event button cues; single button presses and stick motions are indicated in the centre of the screen, but repeated presses or motions are indicated on the bottom-left of the screen. That inconsistency made the final battle awfully annoying...

Anyway, I've decided on the rest of the parts for my new computer:

• 60GB OCZ Vertex SATA 3.0Gb/s SSD
• 1TB Seagate 7200.12 SATA 3.0Gb/s HDD w/32MB cache
• Plextor PX-880SA 24x DVD+/-RW
• Antec TP-650 PSU

30 Seconds

Okay, seriously, Half-Minute Hero is amazing, and I can't put it down... It's a great blend of RPG, critical thinking, and self-referential humour that keeps me coming back for more. I've only played the Hero mode so far, and while I should be bored of it by now (~50% complete), it mixes things up just enough to keep me grinding away. The quest-specific sub-challenges are great incentives that significantly add to the replay value.

Anyway, I bought some more of my new PC today:

• Intel Core i7 930
• ASUS P6X58D Premium
• 6GB (3x2GB) 2000MHz DDR3
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Fun!

PSP

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines didn't provide the revelatory backstory I'd hoped for. While it is a solid title and certainly impressive on the PSP, the played-it-safe nature of the plot really devalues it in the series. I should also mention that the sidequests are essentially optional, as you can power-up your character quite effectively along the way by simply completing the main quest and ignoring everything else. This strictly-optional nature of the sidequests may be a response to the negative reaction that they received in the first game, but because they now offer so little added-value to the experience, they become trivial and provide no compelling reason to complete them; especially since the PSP controls aren't nearly as tight as the console games in the series. I wonder if the DS Assassin's Creed titles are any better...

Anyway, I snagged a few more PSP games the other day:

• Age Of Zombies - Amazingly good, almost entirely on account of its hilarious context for otherwise classic gameplay.
• Echoshift - I never did finish Echochrome, but I had a lot of fun with it and this one seems like a nice addition to the series.
• Everyday Shooter - Pretty cool, not as tight as the hype had led me to believe, but definitely worth checking out.
• flOw - Always loved this one, and it's very pretty on the PSP.
• Half-Minute Hero - Great concept, charming presentation, nothing else quite like it... Definitely worth your time.
• Lunar: Silver Star Harmony - Cheesy voice acting, but a real slick update to the classic game... That I've still yet to finish in any incarnation.
• Patapon 2 - I love the Patapon games because they're so engrossing, beautiful, and endearing, but I always feel overwhelmed by the depth they offer and never seem to get very far with them... I'll change that one day.

Not sure where I left-off...

...but I've since picked-up Deadly Premonition for XBOX 360, Metal Slug XX for PSP, Confidential Mission for Dreamcast, D for 3DO, NBA Jam TE for Jaguar, and Ys Book I & II for Turbo Grafx CD; I ended-up passing on Violent Soldier.

Oh, and from that Lynx lot, I kept Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Electrocop, Gates Of Zendocon, KLAX, Pac-Land, RoadBlasters, Todd's Adventures In Slime World, and Zarlor Mercenary.

Lynx II, Part II

I snagged a Lynx II, power adapter, and 15 games off a local buy & sell for $60. The system has some dead rows on the screen, and I already had or didn't want many of the games, but I should be able to make back most of my investment by trading-in what's left.

The games (all loose) were: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (surprisingly good!), Chip's Challenge (flat cart; I'll keep my original ridged copy), Electrocop (impressive game, albeit hard to keep track of what's going on; includes an awesome selection of mini-games), Gates Of Zendocon (ridged cart; decent, though primitive-looking shmup), Gauntlet, KLAX, Pac-Land, RoadBlasters, Robotron 2084 (good conversion, but the control scheme is sorely lacking), Rygar, Todd's Adventures In Slime World (love this game), Ultimate Chess Challenge, Xenophobe, Xybots, and Zarlor Mercenary.

Holy Busy!

Latest acquisitions: Gate Of Thunder for TurboGrafx CD (Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, and Bomberman are also included on the CD). I also have Final Soldier, Lords Of Thunder, Super Star Soldier, and Violent Soldier on hold. I picked-up Command & Conquer: Renegade and Diablo: Hellfire on Windows, and they're still great fun after all those years :)

I've also gotten back into Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines on PSP. Playing through Assassin's Creed II and seeing some of the flashbacks really tied the PSP game's storyline into the overall mythos of the series, and I'm feeling much more connected to what's happening. Yes, the graphics and voice acting are a step down from the main entries in the series; and yes the areas are smaller, the population is less dense, and the assassinations are less complex; but it's still pretty impressive to see, given the hardware. Without the story integration, it'd ultimately be a mundane exercise, but alongside the revelations of Assassin's Creed II, it really draws you in quite effectively.

Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I purchased Sequence 13: Bonfire Of The Vanities from XBOX Live after seeing the ad for it on the welcome screen. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd purchased that content that I checked-out the XBL marketplace and saw the Bonfire Of The Vanities & Secret Locations option. Having already purchased the advertised version that didn't include the secret locations, there was no way for me to get those secret locations without buying the more complete package (essentially re-buying Sequence 13). I felt misled, so I called Microsoft's customer support. Long story short, the third person to whom I was connected ended-up deflecting my questions with circular logic, telling me they'd really like to help me and that they could, but that they weren't going to. Then they wished me a great day! I assured them that I would not have one. Sequence 13 was fine, and totally worth $4, by the way.

Finally, I'd like to bitch about Epson's nozzle cleaning process on my Stylus Photo R300 printer. Because two of the six ink cartridges (cyan and magenta) were low on ink, Epson's software would not allow me to perform a nozzle cleaning. I had to replace the two low-running cartridges (even though they were not empty, and I was only trying to print in black) just to clean the black nozzle. That's not cool, Epson.

Beyond

I finished Beyond Oasis on Genesis last night, and it was still great after all those years! I'd made it pretty far in the game when I was younger, but can't remember completing it. I wrapped things up pretty quickly (about four-and-a-half hours), at a relatively low rank (48) with only a little over 1000 kills, and 32 of 60 gems... So I guess I have some treasure-hunting to do. The game was enjoyable throughout, if a bit easy, but definitely an original take on a genre dominated by Zelda and full of copycats.

I've since started The Legend Of Oasis on Saturn, and I'm having mixed reactions... The graphics are gorgeous at a higher resolution than the original, there are more frames of animation, a much bigger colour palette, the addition of scaling sprites, and a new CD audio soundtrack. Consider some new key characters and core gameplay elements (like a much less forgiving save system and a revamped weapons configuration), and one might think that this game is a solid evolution of the winning original formula... But the writing is just awful, and the combat is neutered. Sure, it's a similar basic story and many of the same attacks return from the first game, but it all just feels so phoned-in. There's no character or cohesion, and it's glaringly apparent in the lack of any fluidity in combat. Another major change that I'm not too fond of is the lack of any real inventory, so health- and magic-replenishing items are used when touched rather than manually picked-up and managed in anticipation of more difficult areas. You can also only carry either one health or magic potion at a time; meaning you can have either your health or magic refill automatically upon depletion... But because the new system no longer allows you to pick things up, if you have a health potion and accidentally touch a magic potion, your health potion is lost forever. Then there're the tutorial obelisks scattered throughout the land; it would be nice if they didn't wait until the second dungeon to explain fundamental game mechanics that have been changed since the original, especially when those concepts are key to unlocking other new fundamental game mechanics that were only available in the first dungeon. Spending time backtracking in a game with a limited save system is something I only barely tolerate from the Metroid series... I don't like it here either. Perhaps these new design choices will make sense down the road, but I'm just not having the same fun I had with the first game.

On the computer front, I'm inching ever closer to purchasing a Core i7 920-based system; especially with the recent release of Bioshock 2. The novelty of owning a top-of-the-line QuickSilver 2002 Mac as kinda worn-off, but it did allow me to spend some quality time with Mac OS X... So now I'm thinking that a vanilla Mac mini (2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 160GB HDD) alongside my forthcoming Windows 7 machine might be a solid idea.

Better Than Expected

In addition to Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast, I also snagged Robo-Squash for Lynx, Skullmonkeys for PlayStation, OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for XBOX, Starfox Assault for GameCube, and an XBOX 360 Chatpad.

I also set-up a free, centralised, web content filtering system using OpenDNS, Freeproxy, and custom GPOs... That was pretty cool :)

An Oasis

The Adventure of Link is incredibly frustrating and Majora's Mask is particularly confusing, so I re-started Beyond Oasis last night and got about half-way through... I love it; I should've done this ages ago!

Also, I'm gonna pick-up Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast after work today.

Feline Naming Conventions

I bought an Atari Lynx II, an official Atari power adapter, Blue Lightning, Chip's Challenge, and Gauntlet: The Third Encounter.

I'd been hoping to pick-up RoadBlasters, Slime World, and Toki, but the place I'd seen them before had sold them since... I'm considering Battle Wheels, Hydra, Robo-Squash, Turbo Sub, and Xybots.

Radical

ODST was rad. $70 rad? No, but then I'm not really into the multiplayer aspect of it all, and ODST surely offers a wealth of multiplayer value for the Halo 3 experience. It is, however, a very enjoyable single-player campaign that shows us some new versatility within the Halo universe; would be nice as a $20~$30 product for those of us not particularly interested in multiplayer, or those of us who have already purchased much of the multiplayer content included. The save system still sucks, but re-playing the first few levels wasn't the end of the world.

I think I've given-up on my current attempt at completing Majora's Mask... I'm tempted to restart the game on Wii (The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition) with a walkthrough for heart pieces and the Bomber's Notebook stuff. I've already re-started The Adventure Of Link on NES.

Expansions

The new Assassin's Creed II downloadable content, Battle of Forli, was pretty cool. Nothing special, pretty short, and it didn't really add to the story (some barely-developed characters show-up and manage to outsmart the group of assassins that just saved the world!?); but $4 for an hour's worth of new content and some added replayablity ain't bad. I was a little upset that my character didn't continue with the sword I had at the end of the game (or any sword for that matter), but I managed. It was also weird that Ezio's facial hair seemed to come and go... Whoops ;) Regardless of its faults, I lok forward to the next installment of DLC.

Halo 3 ODST is really good though. Instead of being a supreme badass following an epic story arc, you get to be relatively insignificant in a much more humble setting, all while feeling lost and lonely in a very real way; that's some impressive storytelling. I do not appreciate, however, the fact that after finishing about half of the game and choosing to save and quit from the hub level, my progress was not saved. Sure, I could revisit the missions I'd unlocked, but I couldn't continue my progress... Which meant that I had to re-play one of the previous missions and then manually choose the next one from the hub map. What's even better is that I'll have to re-play the other three missions in order to actually finish the game! Yeah, that's just amazing; I'm so stoked for that. Ugh.