Shadow Complex

Shadow Complex

Best game ever!

I can't believe how good this game is. Seriously. I'm in shock. Play it; stop reading and play it now. I bought an Xbox 360 for the sole purpose of this game and don't regret it at all.

I was worried that it would be too easy and I would get annoyed ('cause I only like hard old-school games), so I played it on Insane (the hardest difficulty) from the start. This mode was clearly intended to be played after you had done a few play-throughs and unlocked the golden weapons and gotten high levels. Until the very end of the game when you get the Inertia Element and the Fusion Helmet and you reach around level 40, the game is basically a stealth game. Even with full health upgrades, you can die almost instantaneously in most rooms. I loved this though. The very next day after beating it at 100% map and 100% items, I immediately started again. I love it.

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII

At the beginning of August, I played through FF7 for the first time in a long time. It definitely is not preserved as well as Final Fantasy 6. The graphics are just ugly and distracting. Additionally the game is filled with really annoying minigames. Ugh. Nevertheless, the game is still pretty good.

Added Upon, by Nephi Anderson

This is a quaint book from the early 1900s by a Norwegian Mormon in Utah. It traces a few people from the pre-existence to them living in the Millennium. This book could have been so good. The part in the pre-existence is so tacky in trite I can hardly say anything kind about it. The author was too afraid to go beyond scripture to actually make it interesting and sensible. The parts on Earth were very cute and highly recommended. Once the story moves to the Millennium, it loses some of the cuteness of the Earth parts in exchange for the lame-ness of the pre-existence, but it is still quite interesting. Something I found funny was that this early 20th century Mormon imagined that at the start of the Millennium they would just be laying the foundation of the 100th temple. Presently there are 130 operating, 8 under construction, and 8 announced.

Recommendation: If you are Mormon, you may be interested in what is essentially the first truly Mormon novel. However, it isn't particularly good.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is the second GBA Metroid style Castlevania game. I played it on the plane to and from ICFP 2009. It was very fun. There are few points where the game is really confusing because there is basically no direction about what you're supposed to do and how an item you got is actually a key. It was frustrating to spend hours wandering around looking for something that I could do that I hadn't done, but I learned the map really well as a result.

Recommend it!