The New Monster

My nocturnal agenda's in disarray. I've been getting sleep at long, sloppy intervals, then holding onto my dormancy like a drowning person their last few mouthfuls of oxygen. The work schedule has necessitated far too many 24-hour days, due to shifts stacked too closely for my finicky sleeping habits. As a consequence, I've become unstuck from time. Now, I'm floating from days to nights, and occasionally into that hateful little margin in between.

All the Neutral Mornings

So I've kinda stopped playing the video games. This has become mostly a gaming blog over the past year, a trend that I regret. I still would like to end up a games writer some day, but ... part of me thinks that I'm just pouring more waste into the lake by writing yet another game review.

Jenn Frank and her blog, Infinite Lives - well, I have an uncomfortable affection towards both. She wrote a post, "Dementia, video games, and the end of the beginning." Reading it wasn't really an epiphany, but it evoked something for me.

I used to sit in my basement, for more hours than I can describe without ending up in Hyperbole Heights, playing emulated SNES games on my Pentium 133. In the summer, it was nice and cool in the basement, my refuge from heat, people, and whatever housework I'd get snared into wandering the visible spectrum of my home. Thinking about it now, I get uneasy. There's an instinct in all of us to defend our hobby, but it doesn't seem like it was an awfully healthy way to spend the time.

One day while in my basement, I caught the amalgamated scent of summer in the air, and I felt the foolishness of playing Earthbound for the third time while all these beautiful smells passed me by. So I decided to renounce video games. My memory's pretty vague, but I don't think I lasted a week. It wasn't a noble effort; my end goal was normalcy. I wanted to wash that geek right out of my hair, and I didn't realize how difficult it is to abjure one's identity.

So I've kinda stopped playing the video games. I feel hypocritical for rejoicing.

The White Way

Prototype today. It's become a bit more hassle than its worth, so I'm rushing through it to get its achievement sweetmeats and return it to my local rental outlet.

Why do we (I) come to this point? Once the pretense of entertainment is gone, the pitiful cycle of the videogame hatefuck sets in. If Prototype was, say, a movie on television? I'd change the channel, no remorse.Instead I throw a mini-tantrum, yelling and squirming about, every time the game seems to thwart me. All my worst traits emerge, and I become a part of the inarticulate, angry biomass that clogs the internet.

Mad as a Box of Frogs

Right now, I'm all into Giana Sisters DS, a remake of The Great Giana Sisters. The similarities to Super Mario Bros., and by extension every other platformer from 1986-1995, definitely stand out - and it's all good. The controls are moment-to-moment spot-on, the graphics are beautiful yet crude, and the music is forgettablly catchy, with a little bit of SID twang dropped in. It's utterly disposable, but I love it and I want to marry it in that middle school way that's devoid of any lifetime commitment.

It could be nostalgia. When I play a familiar game and marvel at it, the N-word is always partially formed in my throat. It makes me think of the lazy summer days (like today) spent before I knew the ticking of the clock. Christ, it makes me think of Skunny, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Duke Nukem before he went all sunglasses. Not innocent, not better, but an era where a platformer didn't need to have RPG elements or come from Nintendo.

I'm rambling by now, because I'm talking up a game which I don't like all that much. I've gotta write more, get that voice down.

Sanguine Eden

I went to the county fair today. Saw lots of 4-H exhibits, experienced a pig race, and ate deep-fried Oreos. I tried to stay out of Judgmental City Prick as Observer mode, and mostly did okay. Still, to enter this world where livestock is commonplace - while abiding in an apartment where I can't even have a dog - is weird.

I live in Chicago, and sometimes you can walk two blocks in a direction and feel like you've entered a different city. Today, I went ~75 miles and felt like I was in a different country and decade.

Word of Command

I spent the last week playing Red Faction: Guerrilla.

Single-player, it's an open-world GTA-style game. Since the original Red Faction, the series' gimmick was that you could blow up the environment - only, in earlier games, the destruction you could cause was awful limited. It was less "Blow up everything!" and more "Shoot the red boxes and they disappear!" So I was pretty happy that Guerrilla is more liberal with the wrecking. You can break apart anything except rocks and the ground; any building is ready to be destroyed, either by rockets, explosive charges, or your trusty sledgehammer.

The campaign revolves around a forgettable story about some sort of liberation from a vague evil bureaucracy. Honestly, I didn't need the fiction to be better, but I really wanted less of it. You play missions to advance the story, going through a small variety of side-missions to unlock further story missions. The formula is awfully familiar, and would be more successful if there were more to do in the world. There are buildings that you're encouraged to blow up, and you can get in skirmishes with the enemy, but I felt that the sandbox only existed so that you wouldn't merely select missions from a menu. The vehicle controls aren't objectionable, but driving around the world just isn't fun.

The multiplayer is Guerilla's ultimate redemption. I really don't play shooters online, but this one is a god damned blast. You're given a choice of power-ups with a variety of uses: cloaking, flying, earthquakes on command, wallhacking, and the positively delightful Rhino pack, which allows you to charge through walls, mowing down any other players in your path. The different gametypes work, your murder methods are plentiful, and the matchmaking is smooth like silk (on the 360, at least.) The single-player game is worth a rental, but I was late to work multiple times because I couldn't resist the lure of One More Game of deathmatch. The argot of online shooters is beyond me, so I'll put it simply: Play this game.

My Judgement: Idle Magic

Hideous Laughter

The character-shaped Macaroni and Cheese always tasted terrible. The shapes weren't right- all the junctions of the little noodles were just uncooked enough to be hard and gummy.

Oh How Happy We'll Be

My new favorite snap is "See, this is why nobody likes you." It's really only effective against a person with a certain range of insecurities, but I recently used it on a former friend, and it was pretty good. Best used on a loner or the socially awkward; I know I'd wilt if someone aimed it at me.

Maybe I'm in love with it too much. I was wondering if there was a more direct form of schadenfreude, but I guess that's just sadism, hey?

A Community of One

I'm reading this Star Wars comic right now, Knights of the Old Republic, and it's really good. Most people, if they want to write, they want to write something revelatory, but this makes me feel like I'd rather write entertaining schlock. If I could learn how to start a story, I'd be half on my way, but I haven't written even a small bit of fiction in a while.

This comic is really good though. I love the games it's based on, as they represent a sector of the Star Wars universe not fitted with the cement shoes of 30 years' baffling, sprawling, and often boring continuity. Hm ... I'm a huge superhero comic reader, so that statement feels hypocritical.

Devouring Greed

Have you ever thrown up and just felt 150% better? I just did. I'd made a late dinner of mediocre tempura (my first time making it,) and two hours later I was thrashing in my bed like I was going to die. After regurgitating a good deal of the meal, I feel even-keeled.

Life is goooooood.