6-28-06, 3:03 AM

Must've got the wrong signal... You're not plastic are you?

Music: The Cure - In Between Days

It's been a while, again. I had to format my hard drive earlier this month and I haven't been able to track down my copy of Microsoft Office so I haven't had FrontPage to update with, which is why I'm at Webster right now using it here. I didn't want to use Tripod's web-based editor because switching between the two tends to mean pages and files get lost.

Gave the What to Think section a long overdue update.

I really need to find a new purpose for this site soon, and the direction would definitely seem to be getting myself to write. I would like to try an experiment where I get myself up here once a week and write for an hour, quick and dirty, no obsessive editing, and upload my work. Though I think the only thing that'll accomplish is poor grammar and several unfinished storylines. I can't do it at home and my goddamned laptop is busted with a broken screen, I think someone inadvertently stepped on it pretty hard, so I'd have to do it here at Webster.
I've been debating whether or not to put up that sci-fi thing I had started writing on a couple weeks ago. I would do it in a second if I didn't think it was so rough and needed work.

I know that I need to start putting something up here other than just talking about what video games I've been playing, which is why right now I've reserved this section to talking about what video games I've been playing.
After being initially daunted by the size of Oblivion and being bored of it I've finally managed to reach some sort of stride with it and have been playing it much more lately, to the point where I'm close to reaching the 70 hour mark with it and I've still barely scratched the main storyline. Really it was the Oblivion gate sections that had killed it for me, they're just so goddamned boring to be in. Ooh, monsters and lava and corpses hanging around, spooky. I didn't see that every five seconds in Doom 3 already. And like Doom 3, I got tired of running around the same dark caverns and corridors and it got to the point where I had saved my game in a gate and hadn't returned to it for weeks. I'm really glad they aren't necessary to fool with in the grand scheme of things. Not yet, at least.
The first two real entries into the brave new world of episodic gaming both hit Steam several weeks within each other and have been quality products so far. Ritual's SiN Episodes: Emergence updates the original's all-out action style with some great shoot outs and varied, highly detailed locations, but the major shortcoming being that like its predecessor it doesn't offer much in the way of gameplay than just continuous run-and-gun action. That's fine, it's a lot of fun making heads explode, and fits better in a format that has a shorter gameplay span of time, but if the series wants to survive it's going to have to come up with some fresh ideas.
If that's the opening act then you might refer to Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode One as the main event. They've invested a lot in this new format, considering they're planning at least three episodes and they've gone so far as to consider this series as Half-Life 3, and their work has proved to be an extremely refined and satisfying experience. Working to push out a smaller product in a shorter amount of time they've really focused on created an extremely condensed game, getting the player from set piece to set piece with no filler sections in between (Buggy and boat sections, anyone?). Taking place directly where Half-Life 2 ended, you awake as Gordon Freeman once again to find the Citadel in shambles, unstable, ready to explode and poised to take City 17 with it. Pretty much the entire episode consists of you and Alyx, who is with you the entire time, trying to make your way to safety out of the city. You'll go from a crumbling Citadel to pitch-black tunnels to an underground parking garage to a zombie-infested hospital to the ravaged streets of City 17 and more in just the span of five or six hours. The pacing between action and puzzle-solving is almost perfect and holds your attention from start to finish, which is admittedly not very long. The next episode promises to be much more non-linear and emphasize exploration of the wilderness outside City 17 and sounds both promising but awkward for the Half-Life universe.
And there's the major problem with the format, while it may be better than waiting four or five years for one big, long title, there's still a development time between episodes that lasts several months, and during that time anything can happen. Show-stopping bugs and other snags could easily push back the release of the new episode yet another month or two, maybe more. I'd much rather see a team do all the necessary work to release one episode per month for a couple months, allowing them a good cushion of time to have the next batch ready for when the time comes.
Still, both of these are worth the reduced price point of about $20 a piece, though Episode One deserves your attention much more than SiN, and both of these series' promise some big things in the future. I'm hoping they can pull it off.

Finally, when I ask for a girl's e-mail address when I'm prompted to at work during the check out process, nine times out of ten they usually say "no" they say it in such a tone that makes me feel like I've just asked them for their phone number and they've just shot me down. A tone that suggests what they really want to say is "Think again, Tons-of-Fun."

-K.