Well, that's another vacation week in the books--the last one until spring, so it's a good thing that we made it count. I think it was a good one. :)

I think I'm approaching the climax of both the major games that I'm working on. That means that both Okami and Metroid Prime are ratcheting up the challenge. By the way, Nintendo, I don't know who told you that hopping across small platforms, in first person, in the dark with only the infrared vision, was fun, but they were wrong. I haven't quite made it across the room yet, and I'm really hoping that you at least made it so I only have to cross the room once.

I was playing Gran Turismo 3 as a break from those, but I felt like even though the game is awesome, the controller was holding me back, so I splurged for a racing wheel controller from Amazon.com. That puts GT3 on hiatus until my controller gets here, so I imagine there'll be a new game on the Now Playing list to take its place for a couple of weeks.

The DS I bought on Thursday is a smash hit--Dana even likes it! She's enjoying the stylus-based minigames that were included on the New Super Mario Bros. card. I can see why a gaming 'newbie' would be attracted to the DS--there's no need to explain the controls, just draw on the screen. If she continues to enjoy it, we may have to get her her own. ;)

We're back from St. Louis after having mostly broken even up there. I spent more than half my time in the casino playing a "Shinobi" slot machine because it was really fun and it looked to be the only slot machine with ninja battles in it. Anyway, we decided to go out to Springfield last night to re-spend our winnings, and I decided to finally get a Nintendo DS (I picked the Onyx Black DS Lite). I was having trouble deciding between it and the PSP, but since the PSP games I'm really excited about aren't out yet, and since the DS will enhance my GBA games so I can actually see them, it got the nod this time.

I bought New Super Mario Bros. as my 'entry' game to go with it, and it's amazingly fun. I think I'm having as much fun with the included touch-screen minigames as I am with the actual Mario game, though. And Metroid Fusion looks better than ever now. I feel like I'm seeing it for the first time--many of the backgrounds that I thought were solid black actually have nifty details in them under backlighting. :)

So, I dumped all the DS games that were hanging out on my Tracking list into my Wish List, since they're fair game now that I finally have the system. I'll be back on Sunday for my usual weekly update; I'm gonna go play Luigi Poker some more now. 8)

I'm still playing the same three games I was playing last week, plus I started a new game of Gran Turismo 3, just for something really different. I'm driving a VW Beetle for the first few races, which I know is not the most efficient way to get started off, but it sure is the cutest way. ;)

There's one thing I notice that I'm doing differently this time--which may be contributing to my ability to have more fun with games nowadays. I've always been one to use a guide for all my games. Way back to the NES days, even. Metroid? Zelda? I had the "Official Nintendo Players Guide" that told me where every item and every door was. I didn't need to search out anything, it was all spelled out for me. The "second quest" dungeons that are supposedly hard to find? Not for me! I had a book that told me where they were. I never really believed in "spoilers" because I thought that I still hadn't seen it in person yet, so it wasn't really "spoiled".

When I was playing the first God of War, I remember that there was this one room that had a puzzle where you have to figure out how to get yourself high enough to rescue the Oracle.The solution is kind of a tricky thing, but I had already read ahead in the guide and had been told how to solve it before I got there, so the whole thing was pretty much a non-event. I remember thinking that it would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't "spoiled" it and had been able to try to figure it out myself. So when I got God of War II a couple months ago, I made a point to not read any guides about it until I finished the game once, and I was right! There were a couple of tricky puzzles very similar to the one from the first God of War, and they were a lot more fun to puzzle out on my own.

So, all the games I'm playing now are being played without the guide. It occurred to me today, while I was playing Metroid Prime, that I don't even know how close to the end of the game I am. I know what my collection% is, but that could just mean I'm bad at finding missile expansions. I'm just along for the experience, without any warning about what's around the next twist. That's kind of cool, in a way.

Yeah, so I definitely have been won over by Metroid Prime. Somewhere in the third or fourth hour, I got used to the controls enough to not have to think about them all the time, and after that, it's been all good. Hard in spots, but not totally frustrating. And a little frustration isn't necessarily a bad thing; after getting killed by the same boss enemy five times straight, it felt great on the sixth time when he blew up into a million pieces. The game does a pretty good job of making you feel like you are Samus Aran, which is pretty cool. It even creates some spooky "survival horror" tension when you're in this Space Pirate lab and suddenly all the lights go out. Then you hear some glass breaking--and you realize the Metroids in the specimen tanks that you passed are loose. Yeah, you fight Metroids in the dark. They did a good job of making the Metroids seem creepy, too.

Oh yeah, and I played Okami some more this week too. The story is taking some interesting turns and I'm excited to see how it turns out. Aside from a tiny bit of Metroid Fusion at work during lunch, those two games were it this week.

This time next week, I'll be all packed for our trip to St. Louis. Then once we get back, the last half of the week will be game time. Vacations are cool. :D

I'm still playing Okami this week. I've actually passed the point in the game where I quit last year, so that felt like an accomplishment. I've got about 40 hours on the game clock now, and using the 'Stray Beads' as an estimate, it looks like I'm about 70% through the game. Given that I'd been pretty down on myself for changing interests so much in the past year, I'm proud of my stick-tuitiveness so far. At least, as proud as one can be while keeping in mind it's just video games.

I'm getting used to the control scheme on Metroid Prime, and I can see why it got such good reviews. I think I'll probably like it. I don't know if that means I'll like other first-person games or not, but I'm more open-minded than I was. The hardest part for me is not being able to see the character's feet while walking near a ledge or jumping across things. It seems like it's fairly forgiving, but I'd really rather be able to pull out to 3rd person while jumping. Oh well.

The Now Playing List will probably stay about the same for the next week (unless I finish Okami), except that for the "ol'-skool" slot I haven't decided whether to keep on with Rocket Knight Adventures or move on to something else. It seems like sort of a shame not to try to beat it before I put it back away, but there's a lot of other "old" games on the shelf to evaluate, too. (This is the part where I should remind myself that gaming is about having fun, not productivity, and I should keep playing it if I want. But next to it is Castlevania Bloodlines, and the choice isn't as clear all of a sudden.)

Vacation in two weeks! Not much longer now...

The main event this week was still Okami, but I did play a few other titles during the week--most notably, the old-school Genesis platformer Rocket Knight Adventures. I think I'll play it a couple more times before I put it back; it's better than I remembered.

Dana and I went to Springfield to go shopping today (we have a couple of vacation days together this week) and I ended up at GameStop. After hearing the extremely reasonable price of $39.99, I am finally a proud owner of a GameCube console. I got Metroid Prime to go with it; it got great reviews back when it was released, and I figured if I was going to give a first-person shooter a chance, maybe Samus Aran would be enough to keep me interested long enough to get used to the alien (to me) perspective. I seriously need to find me a controller extension for this thing, though. Should've looked for that while I was at the store.

Other than that, the coming week looks to be more of the same: Mostly Okami, probably mixed with Metroid now. I expect some of the current Now Playing to drop off the list this week--especially DOAX, which I'm having trouble getting into this time around, even though it used to be a fun diversion for me; maybe I finally realized that there really wasn't much 'game' to it. Soul Calibur III's "short session" spot on the list is probably safe this week, and I still want to give Rocket Knight a better go before I give it a rating.

And that's it for today! I'll update again next Monday.

Well, last week turned out to be an Okami marathon. I'd been a little bit squeamish about going back to that one since it was one of the games I was playing when I burned out, but I finally decided to do it anyway since I remembered it as being really fun. I started a new game, instead of trying to pick up where I left off. And... I'm not sure I actually played anything else last week at all. I'm not as rusty as I thought I'd be, either; I managed to push the beehive up the mountain path on my second try. Maybe I was just lucky, because I don't think I ever made it before.

I think I've just about hit critical mass on that, so I might mix in something else this week to go with it. Or not; I'm just going to do what seems fun. I am going to try to avoid getting started on more than one "epic" game like that at once, though,so no Final Fantasy XII until after Okami's over this time. I think maybe that's what I did wrong last fall. So probably stuff like Katamari Damacy, or a little Soul Cal III, just to provide a break from the non-stop Okami.

My wishlist is filling up a little bit with stuff I wouldn't mind playing, but since I have games here to work on, I really haven't started feeling the need to rush out and buy a bunch of them. That's different than I was, too; I'd buy a bunch of games just to make sure I didn't 'miss out' on them, and either start all of them and never finish, or never get around to playing them all. I want to avoid doing that, too; I'm going to try to make sure I remember to have fun this time around.

Also, it looks like my editorial didn't make the Soapbox. Oh well, better luck next try, I guess.

For most of the last year, I found myself completely disinterested in video games, for the first time since I was thirteen and my NES was new. I definitely couldn't convince myself that there were any games for me on the "next generation" of consoles. After getting lured back to games by God of War II, I've been wondering what it was that chased me away in the first place. For me, the answer comes down to two little words: Online Multiplayer.

See, here's the thing: I am an introvert. That is to say, I happen to be one of those people that want my recreational activities to be solo affairs. We aren't uncommon; studies show that 25% to 50% of people are introverts. And given a choice between a single-player game where it's just you against the machine, or an online game where a bunch of total strangers are involved, the introvert will always choose offline play. Our idea of fun involves getting away from other people, not getting together with them. No offense meant.

I remember when I got started on video games back in '86--they were the answer to everything! No opponent required... the game is the opponent! I could play at my own pace, by myself, and yet the games were complex enough to hold attention. There were some games that were better with two, like Contra for one example, but you could still play by yourself if you wanted, and it's not like the fellow sitting by you with the other controller was a total stranger. Flash forward to the present day, and games aren't just for introverts anymore. The "new" Xbox 360 is practically built around online play. And the other guys at work are telling me that online play is "where it's at," that I'm missing out if I just play games against the computer. And to be sure, most of the new releases helped to reinforce that idea, with all the FPS's and their online free-for-all's and online team play scenarios and stuff. It's probably great stuff, but I know from experience that it isn't for me. It's for all the extroverts, whose motto is "The More, the Merrier."

God of War II lured me back by being a great, single-player, offline adventure... in other words, by being a game for me. And it's about that time that I really came to realize that there's no shame in wanting to play a game by myself, instead of playing it with a "clan" online. Now that I'm back, I see other games in the works that I'm excited about. Heck, one of these days, I might even give a FPS a chance. I hear the single-player campaign in Halo was actually pretty good. Just don't expect to see me online.

Lastly, if GameSpot wants to help make introverts feel welcome, here's a simple way to do so, which would forever earn my gratitude: For games that include a major online-multiplayer component, include a separate rating that is strictly for the offline, single-player experience. Take Halo 2, for example. It got a 9.4, but the review says that the single-player campaign is disappointing and the online multiplayer is revolutionary. Great, but I'm never going to play the online multiplayer. So what would the single-player game have earned alone? A 7.0? An 8.0? Just make sure I can see how the single-player game stacks up, and you'll make me (and all the other introverts) very satisfied. In short, just try to remember that there are lots of people out there who think that one is the best number when it comes to games.

I spent most of the holiday weekend working on Xenosaga. I started a new game since it'd been too long since I left off on it, and I probably put twelve hours or so on it. I gotta tell ya, right now I don't think I'm ever going to make it through the series. I'm pretty sure I'm not even going to buy the other two.

First off, I forgot how stilted and awkward the localization dub was. MOMO's voice in particular makes me cringe, but more importantly, for a grammar stickler like me, broken english in a game I'm supposed to take seriously is almost a deal-breaker. Stuff like, "You can get the details from her, Dr. Juli Mizrahi, later." What the crap? That's really bad, especially since there was plenty of time to instead dub in "This is Dr. Juli Mizrahi. You can get the details from her later." I wish they'd left in a Japanese language option, since that's how I usually deal with bad dubs. Also, the save spots are entirely too far apart. I spent 45 minutes waiting for one so I could quit on Sunday night. Unacceptable. I think I'll just try a different RPG instead of investing more time in this one.

On a more positive note, I don't remember Soul Calibur III being this much fun when I played it on the first time around. I'm still enjoying the heck out of that. Maybe I just didn't give it enough of a chance before--I probably bought something else and just never played it that much. So I'm going to keep playing that one this week, and the fact that I'm continuing to enjoy it helps me look forward to SC4 next year. Not sure what the rest of the "Now Playing" is going to look like this week, but I'll figure it out when the time comes, I suppose.

I started a new game of God of War II yesterday. I'm still wanting to unlock that Athena costume, so I thought maybe I'd just skip straight to Titan mode without running through God mode first. Part of me was a little intimidated by 'skipping a grade' and going straight from 'normal' to 'very hard', but I thought,

"How hard can it be, right? I mean, I finished the game on Spartan...."

Oh. My. Lord. Okay, never mind that, then. It took me like twenty continues just to make it to the first save spot. The first 'boss'? The one five minutes in, that is there to educate you on how boss battles work in this game? It schooled me, all right. You can take one hit from it and barely not die if you're at full life. Plus, is it me, or are the grunts like really pissed off in this compared to Spartan mode? I didn't notice them all making a beeline for me at once before. And this is the first stage! Who am I kidding?

So I guess I'm going to start a new game on God (hard) mode now, and practice some more first. If I never make it, there's no real shame, I guess. I can't be the only guy who never unlocks all the stuff if it's that hard.