Today is the three year anniversary of the engagement of my wife and I!
I brought home some cute gerber daisies and Indian food, but she left little signs and letters that said "Yes!" all over the house, my car, work, etc. It was awesome.
Love is grand!!
When I was growing up, I really liked fighting games like Street Fighter, but I was horrible at them, whether I played the computer or another person. I decided earlier this year that I would learn how to be good, so I bought Street Fighter IV and I practice every day. It is so much fun. I also bought a Mad Catz Street Fighter 4 FightStick Tournament Edition Arcade stick. Heaven! It is so sweet to use for this game and some many others. Come to my house and I will show you its beauty!
After playing Aria, I picked up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. I'd actually played it once before at the start of graduate school, but I hadn't touched it since.
I really like this game. I think it takes a lot that was good about Aria and really refines it. The story is interesting and the twist that every Castlevania game has was played out very well. The world is interesting to explore and the Soul system has definitely improved. One nice addition was the creation of the Soul Synthesis/Weapon Upgrade system, which was a lot of fun to play with and get everything. This was definitely easier for me than Aria though and I beat it in significantly less time. I do plan on going through it again though either in Hard mode or with the secret character.
There are a few things that are just hilarious in the game: the Yeti, the Mothman, the Succubus animation, the Skeleton Waiters, the relationship between Hammer and Yoko, etc. It really reminded me of Symphony of the Night with some of this extra material that just added flavour.
During the last little bit, I played and beat Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the Nintendo GBA. This is definitely a good entry in the Castlevania franchise. I really appreciated the variety that came from the Soul system, but I felt like it had a problem that many RPGs with these "collecting" systems: most of the things you collect are totally useless. This game had two other problems in my mind: first, the difficulty curve had a really sharp spike at one point which required me to grind for almost two hours to get past a boss; and second, the user interface was really poor and that complicated switching souls quickly to navigate around the map. Both of these were fixed in the next entry; in particular the Doppelganger soul allowed you to have two equipment sets readied.
I will definitely play this again as the secret character, so maybe I'll report back then.
For the past few months I've been playing Picross DS every morning. It is much more interesting than Sudoku, which I used to play every morning. The pictures are all really cute it's lots of fun.
Recommendation: Get it!
I recently bought Ikaruga for the Xbox 360. This game is amazing. I can't believe how beautiful and epic it is. I even set up my TV to rotate into portrait so I could play it as it was meant to be played.
The game is so difficult, but so rewarding at the same time. Every new screen is totally different, yet totally builds on the simple controls of the earlier parts of the game. I'm really impressed by this game and can't wait to try out some of the other shmups from Treasure.
There are some amazing videos of it online: level 3 (perfect) and 1 player 2 player. And here's a description of the story.
Before I went on my last trip, I finished reading Eclipse. I definitely enjoyed it.
The plot was not totally identical to the previous books as the first and second had been, but it also was not totally different and weird, breaking from the established structure of the books. The action was definitely interesting, but also varied from what we saw before.
My feelings are much more complex about this part of the story. For example, in the beginning I was disgusted by Edward's controlling attitude, but I was impressed with him as the story evolved. I initially really enjoyed going into the background of more of the characters, but upon reflection there was no really purpose within the story to do so... it simply wasn't believable to me that the characters wanted to share with Bella; instead it felt like Meyer only wanted to share with the reader.
My favourite part of the book was the last five or six pages; I would recommend it just for those!
Posts
All Comments
