happy post-turkey-gluttony-day! a four-day vacation that required no less than 24 hours of gaming. at my house anyway.

my dad's a comp engineer, my 18 yr old bro is going to college next fall for comp science, and my 21 yr old bro is a quake junkie. how could i possibly avoid the video game itch? i got to try a new game while i was home in ohio: KATAMARI DAMACY. like all the gamespot reviewers, i have to agree, it's definitely the sleeper game of the year. quick learning curve, colors galore, an overdose of abstract game detail (a diary of all the objects you roll up into your sticky ball), very clean japanese-style graphics. the storyline is perfect for ADD-afflicted youth, and surprisingly little is lost in translation. the soundtrack isn't bad either - kooky enough to add to the spacey-futuristic-medieval atmosphere, but subtle enough to stay where it belongs, in the background.

so ya. i liked it enough to buy it. i've always had access to and leached off the extensive game collection owned by my brothers, but with me in nyc, and them unwilling to part ways with the game in ohio, this is the first game that i personally have bought for myself. and that's the extent of my "black friday" shopping spree.

how was yours?

only 25 days till xmas...
-cat

my initiation into gamefly involved the acquisition ("rental") of two playstation 2 games, Parappa the Rapper 2 and Futurama. thus far, i'm pretty disappointed with both.

the original parappa was a genius game with an involving plot (i wanna rap!), catchy songs (press buttons on the beats wheee) and a nearly retardedly easy (but fun!) level of play. and 2-D floppy animations of various animals, plants, and humans. in parappa 2, the 2-D has remained, but the quality tunes have disappeared. even with the recognized contribution of de la soul, the characters that parappa interacts with throughout the game fail to entertain, and at points, begin to annoy (yes, you, mr growing/shrinking/growing/shrinking ant). the game also suffers from a poor animation-sequence-to-actual-play ratio. explanatory scenes between levels (all SEVEN of them) take longer to load and run than to beat. and the standardized load animation, a quickly moving side-to-side scroll over a dj's turntable, is enough to make you dizzy.

in short, this game involves a very very brief (and easy...too easy) quest to stop the mysterious transformation of a town's food into noodles. i'm inferring that the target audience has been lowered a few decades, *cough* er, years.

futurama is a slow start. and thus i have not spent much time with it yet. but parappa 2 is getting kicked out of my apt immediately. out in the mail on the morrow, send me something playable gamefly!

game on ny (http://www.digitallife.com and http://www.gameonny.com) was this past weekend, officially oct. 14-17, but i only stopped by on that sunday. it was held at the javitt's center, but i was surprised that it wasn't advertised more widely. maybe i'm just reading the wrong mags. how could wired let me down??? shame. anyway, lots of big names were there...google, earthlink, energizer, ziff davis, best buy. and lots of not so big names: ingineo (glasses w/lil tv's on the side), meedio (digital connectivity), xavix (wireless motion recognition), sonos (a sound system for your hard drive). and *gasp* 1up.com as well as ugo.com. it was on the small side, as far as trade shows go, but it was its first year, so i shouldn't be too hard on it.

freebies: weak to mediocre ~ ziff davis handed out GMR, Xbox, PCMag, and a few others...and sync mag handed out...sync. the verdict is still out on this maxim wannabe ("Stuff For A Man's Life"....hehe)...google gave out mints...but you had to work hard (i.e. beg for stamps + listen to spiels) for your goodies

booths: pretty stylin, lots of modern aluminum + curves

price: $15...i pay $10 to see a movie here in the city, and it's usually a pretty lame theater. i'd say game on was worth it.

crowd: even mix of older tech head guys and teenage DDR raver kids. my kind of crowd.

i missed seeing gamespot there, but i'm sure they'll be on the ball next year!

-c