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

Since tonight is December 31st (and I’m not out partying my way into a drunken stupor) it’s officially the end of the year. So I’m rolling out my top picks of 2007 in no particular order-- except for the last one.

More details when you get there.

Anyway… Looking back at 2007, it wasn’t a year that stands out in my mind. I had to wrack my brain pretty hard for anything I played more than two months ago. Checking out Wikipedia’s “Games of 2007” page for a refresher, I saw a lot of so-so things, but very few that made me say “Oh yeah! Gotta include that one!”

To be fair, there were a few games that I meant to get to, but never did. Call of Duty 4 got a surprising (to me, anyway) number of nods. I’ve never been a fan of the Halo series, so Halo 3 went untested. Raw Danger was a niche sequel to one of my favorite PS2 games (Disaster Report) but the copy I bought new to support the developer is still in cellophane. I’m sure I’ll like Persona 3, and Rogue Galaxy had some wildly varied reactions, which piqued my interest. Level 5’s been on a roll since Dark Cloud 2, so I’d be pretty surprised if I don’t get into that one. I doubt Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would have made my list, but there was an outside chance.

So what about the games I did get to?

Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo Wii) is a game-of-the-year shoo-in for a purely kinetic, throwback experience. It was very probably the best pure platformer (perhaps only pure platformer?) all year. It wasn’t the second coming of Christ the way some have portrayed it to be, but it revisits old territory with a new and interesting spin by way of the whacked-out gravity and high-on-‘shrooms level design. The story sucked and I didn’t appreciate a lot of the stars (out of 120) being assigned to lame time trials or other gimmicks that recycled levels, but regardless the game gets props.

Jeanne D'Arc (Sony PSP) was by far the most superb SRPG I’ve laid hands on in a while... a very long while. Nothing else came close to it in the genre this year, in my opinon. The mechanics were fresh and interesting, the character selection was focused yet varied, and the developers were obviously designing to the PSP hardware since it managed to avoid a lot of the technical pitfalls that plague so many ports. The PSP is really a great machine when developers work with it instead of shoveling foreign objects from other platforms where they don’t belong.

Portal (Xbox 360/Sony PS3/PC) was one of those rare instances when something was truly as great as people were saying. The mind-bending warping mechanics were fantastic, the story and setting were focused and tight, and the developers knew damn well when to stop; at around three to four hours, it was perhaps the shortest game of the year ever but it was solidly enjoyable all the way through. There’s a lot to be said for a game that ends before it makes a player sick of it.

Another Wii entry, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure deserves a nod. Its old-school point-and-click approach was miles away from anything else that's been released lately, giving it a fresh, original feel. Polished, cute and charming, it could also be quite mentally challenging at times, which is something that a lot of games just don’t even attempt these days. It made a few stumbles (actually killing my character and necessitating a restart when I made a wrong move was a little too old-school) but it tried harder than most to avoid the insipid motion-control retardation that plagues most of the Wii trash out now, and there’s something to be said for a title that can legitimately make you feel not very smart at times.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (PSP/DS/Xbox 360 Live) was absurdly addicting and a brilliant idea that doesn’t seem like it should have worked: taking a clone of PC shareware Bejeweled and marrying it to an RPG-like system complete with leveling up, magic abilities and quests. This game was the definition of playable.

The Red Star (Sony PS2) was a super-old-school character-based shooter that languished in development hell for a few years before limping unnoticed to retail. Created from a comic book property nobody’s read, the developers took the alternate-universe Russian characters and crafted a superbly intense and intelligently designed experience on what must have been half a shoestring. Don’t come unless you’re bringing mad skills, but anybody (like me) who was ever into these sorts of games should definitely come.

Last but not least, Mass Effect (Xbox 360) gets my top honors for 2007. It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it hit a blistering home run out of the park and screaming into the atmosphere in terms of storytelling, characterization, cinematic energy, and the ability to get me so drawn into the game that I seriously considered skipping work while I put everything nonessential (like personal hygiene and eating) on hold. Without a doubt, this was the one game I enjoyed most all year. I gushed all over it in my review at GameCritics, and I’m doing the same here.

…So that’s 2007 in a nutshell.

Bring on 2008.

In reverse order:

I signed up for Writers' Market online and got a list of agents... seems like the old days of submitting a manuscript directly to a publisher are pretty much long gone. I'm just starting to scratch the surface of this whole writing thing, but it looks like the way to do things is to get an agent and then let 'em open a few doors for you... hopefully.

Not much to report today.
Things were pretty low key as the wife and I each finished our last gigs before my son arrives tomorrow. Made a little lunch, tidied up the place a bit, nothing big.

We had meant to go see Sweeney Todd tonight, but for the second night in a row we both found ourselves a little too pooped to pop and decided to stay in. Heard nothing but good about it, and if any readers have comments, I'd love to hear them.

Games-wise, we've been trying to do a lot more co-op lately. I had picked out a handful of last-gen games I never got around to and we decided on giving Dungeons and Dragons Heroes on Xbox a whirl. It plays out like a standard dungeon crawl so far, but the graphics are surprisingly good for the Xbox and I appreciate the amount of short cutscenes that've been added to spice things up. It's nothing to rave about, but it's good and solid. We'll move on to Lego Star Wars II and Resident Evil Chronicles later on. Army of Two is what I'm really waiting for, though.

Last but not least, I'm about 10 minutes away from sending in my first official submission to a real-deal publisher. Their website says not to expect to hear anything for at least three months which seems to me like a crazy amount of time to wait, but I guess that's the way the game is played....

Just a quick one tonight.

Had a list of things to do but before I knew it, I looked up and the day had slipped away.

Le sigh.

Anyway, a quick observation: My "day job" frequently takes me into mental health wards and psychiatric inpatient units. A lot of the staff there are fine, but there's always a certain percentage that seem like they're patients wearing stolen lab coats.

Case in point, one particular staff person tonight was completely irate that I had shown up for work about 20 minutes early. That's right, early.

When i got there, I asked if the staff person was ready for the appointment , but instead of a simple yes or no, this person took the opportunity to launch into a tirade and berate me for not calling ahead. Keep in mind, I'm not going to someone's house for a social call... this is a scheduled professional appointment in a clinical facility.

I explained that I had just happened to be done with my previous appointment early and thought maybe we could all go home a little sooner if the gig was done ahead of schedule. (It was friggin' Christmas Day, after all.) I went on to apologize for any inconvenience, and said that I could easily come back in 20 minutes at the originally scheduled time. Was this good enough? Of course not.

This person then made a point of saying that they could have been doing something... or could have been on the phone when I arrived, like I'd somehow interrupt their ability to do anything while I was in the building. They went on to reiterate that it was just bad manners to arrive somewhere early without calling ahead, regardless of the fact that they knew I'd be there in 20 minutes anyway and there are an infinite number of spots for people to sit and read a magazine.

I mean, it would be one thing if I was popping up unexpectedly on someone's front porch, or if I came to pick up a date while she was still putting on makeup, but unless I'm way off base, isn't the logical, sane response just to say that you aren't ready and then let the person wait?

I didn't really see the point of this person going off on me, but I pride myself on being professional and didn't want to make a scene, so I just apologized again and took it while I bit down on my tongue and cursed the staff person silently.

The really messed-up part? This same person was telling me just last week that they wished I could show up a little earlier for the next appointment.

No joke.

So, mental health staff and mental health patients... birds of a feather?

I think perhaps.

First of all, Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to any and everyone reading. Although it's Christmas Eve as I write this, my son doesn't arrive until the 27th, so there shall be no opening of presents until the 28th. Santa better just hold his goddamn horses this year.

In reference to the title of today's post, I've finally gone through all of the major edits and feedback that people had given me about SIFT, and I've implemented all the ones that I felt fit just in time to take a break and give total attention to my son once he gets here.

...Of course, I have yet to hear from about 14 people who received preliminary copies, so it's very possible that I'll have to go back in and do some more tweaking. It's pretty hard to be objective about something I've been working so long on, and I never would have imagined that it would be so tough to get people to read my book and give me some feedback. On the other hand, I guess I could see it as commentary of a sort that people actually haven't read it... in that case, it's very possible it could need a lot more work. ; )

That aside, I'm calling it "done" for now. I could continue fiddling with it for the next six months if I let myself, but there has to be a point at which I just let go and move the entire process forward. So, I'm leaving the main text alone for the moment and I'm starting to gather my material for Book 2. At the same time, I'm going to be sending advance copies out to some of my favorite authors in the hope that I might catch their eye, and I'll also be submitting to most of the houses that similar genres. Fingers crossed!

One last thing, I already knew I was married to the best lady in the entire world, but tonight I received proof positive... she slipped me a copy of Hem's "Rabbit Songs", a CD I've had on my to-get list for the last few years. I'm spinning it now, and the wait was worth it.

Thanks, Hon! = )