Duality

Days just don’t get much better than today (right now being an extension of Friday instead of the beginning of Saturday). Up early to go to the research center, where the transmitter finally works. Then to the 192 lab, where we find out that our car troubles is simply due to a bad battery or badly-charged battery. Then unofficial gaming night with other HKN’ers from 7:30 PM to 3:00 AM. StarCraft, Soul Calibur 2, Smash Bros. Melee, Super Monkey Ball 2, a little Ikaruga.

Oh, Nintendo, you didn’t have to release four new DS colors. Just adding black trim around the top of the existing silver/black (like in the E3 pictures) would’ve made me satisfied. But since you’re experimenting, how come there’s no hot orange+red/black, Metroid DS? Yeah, I know you want to reel in female gamers with the pink and aquamarine—but come on, orange+red/black is too good!

What? Yeah, I’ll buy a DS soon, Nintendo. Promise. I already have Mr. Driller DS, man! Hey, you know what will make me buy a DS faster? Bring Meteos to the U.S ASAP. It’s a puzzle game, how long could it possibly take to localize it?

Oh yeah, whatever happened to your Puzzle Collection? Don’t make me pay $60 to import it and another who-knows-how-much to add a region switch to my GC. There are plenty of people in the U.S. that want to play Panel de Pon (Tetris Attack), Dr. Mario, and Yoshi on their GCs. Trust me.

It was quick, so I added in the number of comments next to the links to previous posts. Also increased the number of links to 7 each.

Is it obvious what the numbers stand for? Or should I explicitly state “(2 comments)” or “(comments: 2)”?

So..hmm, I’ve noticed that I start a lot of things out with “So”, so…I’ll try something different for now ;)

Well, (much better!) now that Qsk and I (or should I call you Quad…Lloyd is confusing me) have got this place pretty much up and running (with Qsk doing most of the work, of course), it’s time we started talking about reviews. One of the main reasons we decided to try this side by side weblog was so that we could review games together, as well as other forms of entertainment (that night at the strip club where I lost my innocence not included, Qsk). So the big question is, upon what scale should we put these games against? After much deliberation, many hurt feelings, and several binge drinking sessions later, we’ve agreed upon a 5 star scale. The breakdown is as follows (it may seem familiar to some):

Five stars: Our highest recommendation
Five-star games are a rarity. Overall, if a game gets a five, buy it. No matter what. I don’t care if you have to steal the money from the girl scouts outside selling cookies. If you’ve ever enjoyed watching pixels on a screen, you must own this game.

Four stars: Great
A fine example of gaming. A game with four stars is something that fans of the genre must own. Also, games that are terrific in their own right, but may have only a limited audience (like all Japanese games except Final Fantasy) may end up in this category.

Three stars: Average
These are fun-to-play, pretty solid titles with a few minor flaws. A game with three stars doesn’t have to suck, but it may just something that we’ve seen a million times. If it’s not something unoriginal, then it’s just average. If you really like the genre, then you can buy it.

Two stars: Fair
Not too much here to recommend. There are way too many crappy things about this game to let anyone but the truly die-hard fans get any kind of enjoyment out of. You can buy this if you want to, but we’ll damn sure make fun of you for it.

One star: Poor
We cannot recommend this title under any circumstances. It’s now a law in California that if you get caught with this game in your possession, you will be dragged out into the street and beaten for all to see. Seriously, there is nothing redeeming about this game at all. So if you buy this game, tread carefully. Governor Schwarzenegger’s made beating your ass senseless legal, and I intend to take full advantage of the law.

Now the only difference between Qsk’s reviews and my own is that I will be reviewing them from the stand of the average gamer. I will be fiercely sticking to this rating structure, while Qsk on the other hand will be reviewing things from much more of a skewed perspective; His own. What this means is that…well..I’m not entirely sure. I’ll let Qsk explain it when he’s ready too. Also, the stars themselves have yet to be created, so we can’t officially start reviewing anything yet, although I’m of the opinion that we don’t really need images of stars. Simply saying 4 out of 5 or whatever should be enough, but Qsk is the designer, and I’ll leave that up to him.

Anyway, I’ll try to wrap this thing up and let you get back to your oh-so busy lives. If you have any questions or ideas, please feel free to comment like always. Hopefully, we’ll get this system up and running soon so you can bask in our pathetic attempts to amuse ourselves. In the meantime, I’ll give you something to ponder. Did you ever wonder why American cheese doesn’t have feet?

So, here’s was yesterday’s schedule:
9am-1pm – class
2-3 – class
4:30-6 – class
6-9 – rehearsal

Long day on campus. Here was today’s:

10am-5pm – sound editing / writing cue sheets
5pm-11pm – rehearsal
11-?? – Drama project and other homework.

So why am I showing this? Simple. I’m busy. reeeaalll busy. Tomorrow I have school from 10am-6pm. Afterwards, I’ve got a bunch of sound work to finish up. and Thursday will look like today. So, not that I’m trying to make excuses or anything (OK, so maybe I am), but if I don’t update very often then at least you know why.

This weblog is a reflection of me. My thoughts, my feelings, my life. And these days, my life is busy, so the weblog will represent that. Enjoy.

P.S. My Expectations post is getting quite a lot of comments. Interesting reads.