Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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I haven't updated in a few days, and it seems like I’ve got a lot to catch up on...
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Family: My son’s fall visit is over. We only had a week (summer is the long stay) and unfortunately, the entire family was laid up with the flu, but it was still great to see him.
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It's amazing (yet still sad) to see him every few months. Since his mother lives so far away, I miss out on huge gaps of time, so it's like I see him developing much the same way a documentarian will use stop-motion photography to accelerate the growth of a cactus, or the movement of starfish. You know it takes a long time, but because you only get glimpses, it seems like the whole thing is going a lot faster than it really does.
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The day I dropped him back off was a long one. I had arranged my plane tickets to be able to get him to where he needed to go and then return the same day. It was a good plan and one that I think worked out well considering that I needed to work the next day, but the unforeseen glitch was that I still had a very congested head since the flu was still in its final stages. When the plane got up to cruising altitude I had an intense sensation of pain, and my ears never ‘popped’ back to normal regardless of how much I chewed, or how many times I yawned. I could hardly hear things on the flight, and when we landed, I couldn't even make out what my son was saying unless I was looking straight at him. The flight home was similarly painful, and I was little concerned since my ears still weren't normal.
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I went to the ENT today since it's basically impossible for me to do my job if I can’t hear, and he told me that I had burst capillaries behind both eardrums, and that the space behind them was full of blood on both sides of my head.
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Evidently if you fly with a very stuffy nose, there is no place for air trapped inside your ears to escape and the pressure can cause damage. He did a hearing test on me and found that I had a significant decibel loss on both sides, rendering me “legally” hard-of-hearing. The upside is that this condition is fairly common and only temporary.
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The doc prescribed me some steroids to unclog my head so that the blood could drain, and only a few hours after taking the pills I already felt better. My hearing isn't actually 100% yet, but it's much better than it was, and I'm extremely grateful for that.
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The moral of the story: take a ton of decongestants before you fly!!
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Games: I finished Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box a few days ago. If you played the first one (Curious Village) then you know exactly what to expect since it's more of the same, but in this particular case that's a very good thing.
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In fact, it's actually better since the slightly absurd difficulty of the puzzles has been brought down to non-MENSA levels and this series does a great job of actually integrating the puzzles with the storyline. So many casual games fail to do this elementary step, so it's quite pleasant to see that someone out there actually gets it.
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The music is fantastic, the gameplay is satisfying, and it's basically a class act, all-around. Definitely looking forward to the next game in the series.
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Games: In other DS news, I finally got my hands on Scribblenauts and I have to say, I'm quite divided on it.
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On the one hand, it's an absolutely fantastic idea. Write any word and the game will produce that object to be placed at the player’s discretion anywhere in the level. I mean, how brilliant is that? Need a flyswatter? Write FLYSWATTER and you've got one. Want to summon the dread god Cthulhu? You can do that too, and he actually shows up. Major brownie points there. The downside to the game is that I think the developers kind of bit off more than they can chew, especially in regard to the level of production that’s possible on the DS.
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Basically, I think the level of freedom and interaction that most people expected based on the promises of the game before its release were far above what was actually delivered. Many times objects don't function the way they think they would (or should) -- summoning Cthulhu is fantastic… until he gets pwned by a wolf? It also becomes obvious in a hurry that there are a few words that can be used to get around the vast majority of puzzles the developers came up with. For example, BLACK HOLE gets rid of a lot of problems, and I'm sure most players will be calling on PEGASUS or JETPACK nearly every level.
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Those things are fairly forgivable in relation to how many contingencies the developers would have had to take into account, but the thing that really killed the experience for me was that the physics and interaction of the objects with each other is totally janky, and not at all as solid or predictable as it should be.
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In one level, all I had to do was push a simple button, yet no matter what object I produced, I couldn't get the button to stay pushed. It was incredibly frustrating to say the least, and the fact that I passed it thanks to a random happenstance of physics was not at all the way a game like this should be implemented.
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In general, the game feels like it barely holds itself together, and too many of the situations feel like hit-or-miss affairs based on whether the physics feel like cooperating or not. Like I said-- fantastic concept, but it's definitely not dialed-in.
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Games: Last but not least, my 360’s still in the shop. Kinda frustrating since we’re entering the busiest time of the year for critics, but there's not a lot I can do. In the meantime, I decided to start a brand-new character in Demon’s Souls.
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For those of you that know me, you know that I replay games so infrequently that you might as well say I never do it, yet I haven't been able to get the game out of my mind. The very fact that I even entertained the notion of going through a 40-hour game again (let alone actually started it) is a testament to the quality of FromSoft’s work. Forgive me for sounding like a broken record (scratched CD?) but it gets my Highest Possible Recommendation!
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