Getting Ready For The Holidays
Made a conscious decision to try and pack as much work into this week as I possibly could. My son's coming to stay with my wife and I starting next week, and his visits are probably the most important blocks of time that occur for us all year. As a result, we both scale back our work hours drastically so that we can spend as much time with him as possible. It's great to be able to have big chunks of family time when he's here, but trying to sock away enough money to coast through these "mini-vacations" can be pretty exhausting. Still, it's totally worth it.
In other news, I started playing Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure on the Wii tonight. Wasn't sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. Yet again, Capcom turns in an effort that's charming and clever in equal amounts, confirming my gut feeling that if I had to pick only one developer to support for the rest of my gaming career, it'd be them.
I won't say a lot about it at the moment since I've only just started, but so far each level is basically a big "room" that has a series of puzzles that must be solved in a particular order so that our hero can collect pieces of an animate skeleton. What makes it so great is that this is one of the very few Wii games that doesn't feel like the motion control is crammed somewhere that it doesn't belong. Even better, since it's sort of a puzzle game to begin with, the need for split-second timing (so far) doesn't seem to be an issue -- which is great because I don't feel that motion control has the same level of precision and accuracy that a standard controller can give.
One more quick note before bedtime: picked up a copy of Fables, volume 1 of a collection from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. It was suggested to me by Nightdreamer (his blog is under my suggested reading list to the left) and so far all the things he's recommended have all been money.
...Wait, do people still say things are "Money"?
Anyway, it was worth the price of admission. I guess everybody in the world has known about this comic except for me, but if there are a few of you out there who haven't heard of it, it's sort of a crime drama starring characters from fairy tales and similar literature such as Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Bluebeard the pirate (not quite sure how he fits in), Jack from Beanstalk fame, and so on. I was a little skeptical at first, but Bill Willingham has done a great job from what I've read so far, and I'm looking forward to more. Nightdreamer also recommended another comic called We3, which I totally fell in love with. It's a grim little stand-alone thing about animals strapped into mechanical attack suits, totally sad, and it was probably the best comic I've read all year.
Props to ND, and now it's time for bed.
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When I hear someone say "money" I think of Vince Vaughn and the movie Swingers. And in the movie Swingers there is a scene that shows them playing Sega Genesis' NHL Hockey game and the players get into a fight in the game and Wayne Gretzky's head breaks open and starts bleeding.
They spent 2 or 3 days filming that one scene because they wanted Gretzky to bleed on the ice for the movie but it was super hard to pull off in the game. It almost put them badly behind schedule in filming.
My point: umm, yeah, people still say money. But only if the Sega Genesis is your most current game console.
Hey Brad, I've been at Shanghai for the past few days and wasn't able to surf the internet, let alone read anyone's blog or update mine. So I've only read this entry today. Thanks for giving me the shout-out! I'm feeling kind of embarrassed.
Btw, Fables get even better at the later volumes. That I promise.