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

Sorry for the lack of updates lately (and thanks to everybody who wrote in to ask what was up.) I'm glad to report that the dwindling of updates here at Coffeecola is actually due to a very good reason: my oldest son recently arrived, and is spending the summer with us.


It's always a bit of a transition when the family unit goes from three to four overnight, but it’s a joyous sort of chaos. He's growing up so fast that it seems like a bit of a time warp when he comes back around and he’s 3 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier, but we enjoy every moment together and that’s only amplified by the great relationship he has with my wife. This is also the first significant length of time he’ll spend with my new little guy, and it’s pretty amazing to see the two of them together.

I love kids, can you tell?

Anyway, updates will probably be spotty for another week or two, but please bear with me while we settle in to a new normal. (For the duration of the summer, anyway…)

Games: Not a lot to report here. Basically, I'm still playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. At this point, I'm about forty-seven hours into it and I've only got two battles to go before credits are supposed to roll. Since I’ve poured so much time into it, it would be pretty ridiculous of me to not turn out a review, but I will admit that it will be a tough one to write.


On the one hand, it's pretty outrageously behind the times and has a ton of problems that are fairly significant. On the other hand… I've put forty-seven hours into it. I don't give bad games that much time. I just don't. Clearly, there is something to this experience regardless of its technical issues.


From a games-for-kids perspective, I want to give a quick shout-out to Endless Ocean 2, also on Wii. It's basically the same game as the first in that the player goes underwater, checks out a bunch of fish, and basically swims a lot, but there are a ton of improvements. The menus are clean, and the intro to the game is extremely friendly to the young ones. Directions are straightforward and simple to understand, yet there is quite a bit of depth to be had.


The son and I have only just scratched the surface of this one, but so far I've been extremely impressed. I'll definitely talk about this one more in the future, but based on the few hours I've seen of it so far, I would absolutely recommend it to parents who are looking for games with some substance to them, yet are free from any questionable content. That's a pretty neat trick to pull off, and very few do it, but Endless Ocean 2 has been doing great so far.