Sorry for my recent absence... Work, music, and a particularly nice girl all contributed.
I did find the time to make all kinds of progress in Ys 6, and while it's been a lot of fun, I can't wait to finish it and get into Ys 3; same engine, but supremely optimised with a properly fleshed-out narrative... Mmm. Ghost Of Sparta'll fit in there somewhere, I'm sure.
I also tracked-down a copy of and got started on Fragile Dreams on Wii, and man, is that a ever a beautiful and lonely game! I'd've spent much more time with it if I hadn't gotten a sweet deal on a new copy of Epic Mickey :) Basically, I paid a premium to get the latter title new, so I'm gonna make sure I get my money's worth and play it ASAP. Anyway, I'm a few hours in, and I'm loving it! Yeah, Epic Mickey's reminiscent of the oversaturated third-person mascot-driven platformer genre from previous console generations, but it's just so slick; great graphics, tight controls, a neat gimmick (create the world around you with paint, or destroy it with paint-thinner), and a genuinely interesting take on familiar characters. The cutscenes feel out of place, the camera can be mildly frustrating at times, and there are secret warps that can make following the narrative feel very stilted, but all of that good and bad isn't what's really important.
So yeah, we have a nostalgic 3D platformer that may seem a little rough around the edges... Who cares? Well, you should. It's old news that Warren Spector (Deus Ex) headed-up the development of this game, we've known about the infusion of his trademark branching, morality-based gameplay almost since the project was first announced, and the game certainly looks dark and foreboding, but only once you begin to experience the repercussions of your many actions will you understand the feeling I'm about to describe. Every area has numerous solutions, and they're not all black and white decisions between good and bad. Sure, you can play the game with a focus on altruism and paint, or be more self-serving and paint-thinner your way through the world, but there are also a lot of gray-area alternatives and seemingly extraneous paths throughout, and that's where things get interesting. Here's an example: I had already solved an area in various ways, and noticed a couple of gears I hadn't seen before. The gears were clearly susceptible to my paint-thinner, so I erased one, and then the other, and then something broke and a gremlin I had befriended earlier started yelling at me. Apparently, I had just undone all of the hard work he'd performed for me behind the scenes. I promptly re-painted the gears, but it was too late; the damage had been done, and there was no going back! I was just being irresponsible with my destructive powers, and the game surprised me with real repercussions. I honestly felt kinda bad! What's great about Epic Mickey is that these situations become more morally challenging and complex as the game progresses. I'm nowhere near the end yet, and I really can't wait to see what's next :)
Oh, and Shank got really repetitive as I slogged through it... I'll finish it some day.
As for work, blah! Bandwidth issues (looking into fancy multi-WAN routers), planning for a new server and server software, moving our main database offsite and migrating to a remote client setup, planning a major anti-virus upgrade after our previous solution started taking-down computers with 40GB (or smaller) hard drives, re-imaging computer labs over the holidays, updating and expanding our BlackBerry server, and much, much more. I need a real vacation.
