The unofficial hiatus, of sorts, is over. When the holidays rang in, I spent much less time at Der Computen than I thought I would. I also spent much less time alone playing games than I thought I would and instead hanging out with friends and family, with most of the games being played with said friends.
In short, I still haven't finished Ocarina of Time.
BUT!
I got the Biggoron's Sword and I'm in the middle of the Shadow Temple right now. The last thing that happened before I bit the dust was get zapped by the rotating laser eye guy before I could bomb that door to the north of it. Now that I've blogged this, I won't forget what I was doing when I boot up the game again tonight.
I received the Princess of a Twilight variety, however, as a Christmas gift from my friend Matt. (Mrs. Matt taunted me as I tried to guess what it was, telling me it was for the 360 in hopes of throwing me off. In the end, I just ended up not guessing.) It was of the Wiimote variety as opposed to the Cube controller variety, so my vow to purchase and play the Gamecube version has been shattered. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Matt. (What? How could I not open it? And yes, I'm quite aware I haven't finished Ocarina. See above.)
I must say, while I don't like the "waggle" control better than I do traditional controls for swordfighting, I still like it as much. To me, it's not better, but it's not worse; it's simply different and refreshing. Aiming the slingshot, though, is leaps and bounds better than nudging a kludgy ol' analog stick. The first three hours of this game (I haven't yet entered the first real dungeon with the monkeys showing off their butts) had me mesmerized. Everyone says it's a grind, and though I can certainly see why, I was loving it. I've resigned to put it away, however, until I finally finish Ocarina.
Wii Sports was also played, with Matt, the_antipode and The Cop (known as Cris by name, but calling him The Cop is cooler because it infers he gets to brandish his gun). Having not played Wii Sports with a full four players before, I was unaware of just how much fun this game could be. I still think it's tech-demoish, and I'm still mad that boxing is somewhat broken, but if I can consistently get more people to come over and play I think this game will have more legs than I assumed it would. I do a training session almost every day that I'm home as it is (current age: 26).
The Trigames.NET Podcast crew also had a Game Night session this past friday. the_antipode, Tony and myself gathered at Ethan's place in Brooklyn with his girlfriend's little brother and we gamed pretty much from 8:30pm 'til 5am. Again there was the Wii Sports, a little Guitar Hero 2 action, and some Marvel vs. Capcom 2 revisiting. Let me restate how much I hate the Dreamcast's D-pad.
Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, so far, is unfortunately somewhat of a disappointment. I played some during both game sessions. I don't yet own the game myself, so I can't speak for the single player and the minigames that I *didn't* play, but Monkey Golf is broken. B-R-O-W-K-N I say. Monkey Hovercraft is irritating. Monkey War - the first-person shooter minigame - is slow and mind-numbing. Red Light Green Light is frustrating because your monkey seems to twitch even if you hold the controllers deathly still. I tried putting the 'chuk and Wiimote down on the floor, and it worked - but I suppose one might consider that cheating. Who knows. The gems are Monkey Target, Hammer Throw and Homerun Derby - mostly because they work right and are quick shots. I'm still holding out hope, because I'm always a sucker for Monkey Target of any flavor and as I said I have yet to try the single player. I'll badger the_antipode to bring it over again.
Now some housekeeping. I've got to rev up the New Releases for Trigames again. I'm going to take the DS part of that list and start regularly updating the 100% DS Union with that information, since I've been a terrible leader thus far (thanks officers, especially Seigun and DiDi, for keeping it afloat). I've got to finally finalize and post episodes 28 through 30 of the Trigames.NET podcast, and I've got to start the Trigames PR engine again and start hunting down more publishers' PR firms to get that flow of information cracking. Hopefully as I check the Trigames inbox later today, there will be a burning pile of 2K and Sega information for me.
Stay tuned for more nonsense from me. I've got to put up a new music quiz for you folks soon, too.
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