Well, here we are seven and a half months later, and I’ve completely blown my promise to keep to a more regular update schedule. In my defense, it’s been kind of a messy year so far. I’ve gone through an unpleasant phase, and I’ve only recently started to feel like myself again. I’ve also moved into a new apartment, bought a new computer, and learned a valuable lesson about not placing eBay bids as a lark.
I’ll tell you more about what I’ve been up to later on, but I thought I’d first post a few video gaming-related updates. Towards the end of last year, I wound up with both an Xbox 360 and a Wii. The former I wanted, the latter was the result of the aforementioned ill-considered eBay bid. I’ve gotten a fair amount of mileage out of the 360, actually. More than I had expected. I bought it primarily out of interest in two or three games (Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect, and Rock Band), but I’ve managed to find various other things to keep me playing. I still haven’t beaten Mass Effect, though. I made a good amount of headway into January of this year, but then I somehow managed to corrupt my user profile and lose my saved games. I haven’t been able to make myself sit down and start over as yet. But I’ve lived the Rock Band lifestyle, and I’m absolutely loving it. Harmonix and Activision’s devotion to making new content available online is great, and despite the higher-than-usual price tag for the whole set, I’ve never once felt that I wasted my money.
The Wii, on the other hand, hasn’t seen much action. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m primarily interested in role-playing games and turn-based strategy games, and neither is in great abundance on the system. The handful of Virtual Console games I’ve any interest in I’ve already played on the original consoles, and WiiWare’s original online content has been very slow to match the quality or quantity of material available on Xbox Live. I enjoyed Wii Sports, to be sure, Super Paper Mario was a decent little diversion, and I’ve been meaning to pick up the new Fire Emblem game, but not much else really excites my interest.
On the handheld front, I’ve played the rereleases of Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea for the PSP, and thoroughly enjoyed both of them, even if they weren’t particularly original. Jeanne d’Arc was fun, and I found myself enjoying Brooktown High more than I probably should have. At long last, I’ve started to feel that the DS is holding up its end of the bargain on the games front, with a succession of pretty good titles, including Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, and the remake of Hoshigami taking up much of my time. I also finally managed to snag a copy of the elusive second Phoenix Wright game, so I’ve been catching up on that front.
For the PC, I’ve been playing a great deal of Europa Universalis III and it’s quasi-sequel/spin-off EU: Rome, which are the sort of games-for-history-nerds that you never thought they actually made. I’ve also been playing a bit of the Total War series, and I’ve been eyeing my old discs of Planescape: Torment. It’s been almost a decade since I played through it the first time, and I’m having nostalgia pangs.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll try to be back in a day or two, where I’ll share my springtime gardening experiences. That should be worth a laugh or two. In the meantime, swing over to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and support Joss Whedon’s (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) first attempt at a straight-to-the-web musical comedy.
