On the writings:

Had my love of the passive pointed out to me again. Couldn't tell you why I use the passive voice so much in everything. And while it may be well suited to a passive subject (most of my subjects are), it's still a bad habit. Bad. :(

I'm playing Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked. It gives me mixed signals. For one, I didn't really expect all that much from it, given its anime license and general hack-slashiness, but I do love the anime and the combat scheme was supposedly ambitious.

It is ambitious, it definitely tries to do something I haven't seen before, what with the music tracks determining the available combos. It does do something different with its modes of fighting the hyper mode is *gasp* actually useful in a few places, the tate mode is a distracting piece of eye candy, and the trance mode is something I really want to see.

Unfortunately, the regular fighting is just button mashing, hyper is faster button mashing, tate mode is so fast I find the most useful strategy is to put the controller on the bed and pound it with my open palm (yes, literally, and yes I'm using my worn out controller... ;)). Trance mode requires such rapid button mashing I can't even unlock it. Apparently my mindless pounding lacks finesse.

Graphically it pulls me in different directions as well. The character models are awful. Fuu's hair moves by itself indoors where there is no wind. Jin's clothes are a solid piece, so his legs look impossibly wide when he runs. Mugen's face is shiny like plastic. The animations are jerky and robotic (and repetitive!), It may be amusing to watch them try to eat a baked potato with chopsticks, but not over and over again in the background of an unrelated ten minute cutscene.

But it's so stylish. How can I bash something so stylish? The pacing, at times frenetic and at times infuriatingly slow, is just like the pacing of the anime. The art style, where it's not a question of terrible animation, is fabulous. It's edgy, it's funny, it's artsy, it's kitschy, it's catching.

I love and hate this game. It fascinates and bores me.

[Edit] This post is ungodly long already, but I'd been meaning to mention all day. Carrie going away is a sad day for Philosophy majors everywhere. She's been my secret mascot, making philosophy majors look cool ;).  She's like the me I'd be if my rich dad could buy me a job at GS.[/Edit]