Today was the first official day of summer, and my family spent the evening secluded in our basement waiting for severe thunderstorms, hurricane-level winds, and a tornado warning to pass. What great fun! The weather all passed with no incident, and I even got a little crafting done while we waited it out. Not so bad, really, except that I didn't get to go grocery shopping, and I had cinnamon rolls on the list as a treat for breakfast tomorrow. Guess they'll have to wait :(

In the world of gaming, Portal 2 was great. I really enjoyed it, although as my brother pointed out there is an awful lot of in-between-levels time where the only challenge is finding the wall you're supposed to port to next. They could have done so much more with the actual puzzles but instead added a lot of length by spacing them out more. I found that pretty disappointing, as well as the ending credit song (although the general consensus seems to be that it was better musically than the first, just not as clever with the lyrics. I still like the first game's credits better in all aspects though). I'm not sure I'd buy it again, just because if I have even one friend who owns it for Xbox or PS3 we could play on the same console and I could borrow it for the campaign. But hey, it's nice to be able to play online and replay for achievements and whatnot, so I don't regret it. It is worthwhile, after all.

If you own an N64, you need to go dig up a copy of Pokemon Puzzle League. It's similar to Tetris Attack except better, and super fun, and you should play it, and bring your friends, and it's awesome, and wonderful, and hilarious. The end.

A far as E3 goes, I honestly only paid attention to news from Nintendo and news about Bioshock Infinite (I always liked Bioshock, but between my all-things-underwater phobia and my easy-to-terrify imagination, I just couldn't stand to play it for more than a half hour or so at a time, and it just got too cumbersome to keep going, so I put it down. Finally we're out of the ocean!). I was mildly excited about the LoZ orchestration business, except that the orchestra they actually had at E3 was pretty unimpressive, and the medley they opened with was poorly arranged, in my admittedly arrogant and musically-snobby opinion ;) Of course we all can't wait for the 3DS remakes of classics like Ocarina of Time, but the big news was Wii U.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I think yet about Wii U. I always hated the name Wii for a console and the name Wii U just irritates the heck out of me, but that's completely irrelevant to its value, hah. It's definitely unique, and I love that Nintendo continues to lead the way in gameplay innovations, even if it's at the price of keeping up with cutting edge engines and graphics. I appreciate the attempts to widen the gaming audience, too - I think Nintendo is largely responsible for the now-widespread acceptance of video games because of its library of family-friendly titles. It's definitely exciting to see that they plan on expanding beyond that now, though, since I'm a lot less entertained by Wii Sports and Wii Play -type games than I am by more intense, mature gaming experiences (like LA Noire...more on that in a moment). But there are still way too many questions to be answered about it, and I'm inclined to be doubtful that the answers to them will not necessarily be the ones we're hoping for. Nintendo is concerned with keeping prices low, and I'm still annoyed with Wii motion controls (even with Wii Motion Plus, it's often very finicky and certain games are almost unplayable at points). I'm a little worried that in order to keep prices reasonable (it sounds like it will probably be around $350 for a console and new controller), they'll keep the hardware's capabilities to a minimum. I mean, they can kind of get away with it - it will still be extremely unique, and I think it's going to draw a huge audience no matter what...but how well will it work? Well enough to get by is a dying standard. The other big concern I have is the battery life of the new controller, and the way in which games will compensate for only having one per system at release. Nintendo hopes to eventually sell them separately so you might have 2 instead, but again with the pricing concern, the original intent is a single new controller, supplemented by additional Wii controllers. Remember Mario Party 3v1 games? They were always my least favorite - they just felt too unbalanced. I'm afraid that many Wii U multiplayer games may fall prey to this same problem, but I know that one's up to the game developers. The battery life of the new controller, on the other hand, is all up to Nintendo. Just have to keep our fingers crossed on that one - I personally think it would be great if it had a plug-in option, so you could play and charge at the same time. I know the world's all about wireless right now, but when you recharge a Wii controller, you have to wait hours before you can play again. If there's only going to be one of these new controllers, it would completely stop gameplay to be unable to play while it charges - unless they use regular batteries, which is always a possibility, though it could get expensive if it uses a lot of them and/or they have to be replaced too often. On the bright side, they're stepping up their standards in a lot of ways and it definitely shows a lot of promise. I'm really excited to see where the game developers take this system.

Last but not least, L.A. Noire. It's so freaking expensive. We (my brother, my boyfriend, and I) rented it for a weekend and played about 15 hours, I think. Can't disagree with anyone about it being a great game - I want to own it but just can't spare the cash right now (and hey, maybe by the time I can, the price will drop a bit). According to an interview with one of the developers, it was intended as a "play a little here, play a little there" kind of game, one case at a time. I'd like to do it that way if I get my hands on it again, since for example the homocide crimes got really redundant and actually kind of boring - although that could be due to the fact that we had only about a 50% success rate when it came to interrogations and we missed at least one clue on all but one investigation. That's the other thing, though - unlike Phoenix Wright (which is the only other even sort of similar game I've played - LA Noire feels like a rated-R, non-comedy version of the Miles Edgeworth Investigations game), you don't get corrected when you're wrong. You still get punished, but the case goes on. Finding all the clues and getting your truth/doubt/lies right will lead you to a different outcome than just barely getting by does, and I'm sure that will add a lot of replay value (as well as the open world's random crimes and hidden vehicles of course). It definitely made me feel like if we'd actually bought the game we'd get tons of extra hours of gameplay out of it. Unfortunately, we didn't get to finish it (we were almost done with disc 2 when we had to return it), and I've heard the ending is disappointing. But I can't help but feel like I need to beat it anyways. It's got a few annoying control issues and some occasional cases with too much driving or too much repetition - it's not perfect. But I think it's definitely everything it's hyped up to be.

IRL news, I leave for Africa in about 3 weeks! I'll be gone a month and will be completely video-game free except perhaps for some DS on the plane. Likely not to update much about that here except with a link to the blog I'll be writing about it after I come home.