I’m so scared

My predictions were pretty much spot on regarding my success with Resident Evil 4. I suck. I’ve never had a particularly steady hand with FPS games, and RS4 is no different. Well, it is actually different in that the game frightens me so easily that my control of the main character is even spottier than usual. I really need to stick with the Metroid games, because I can lock onto targets in those games. I’ll try RS4 again, but I’ll wait until the morning when it’s not so dark. Time to go hide under my covers.

New games

My little lady had a wedding dress fitting last night and I drove her out to it, the nice guy that I am. The place is located in a strip mall, basically, and where there’s a strip mall there’s a GameStop. I fucking love GameStop. It’s like a comic book store for video game addicts. Sure, it’s not quite the same because it’s a big chain versus a locally-owned and operated store, but the feeling is the same. Upon entering, you’re greeted by some pimply 17-year-old and a wall of games. I immediately feel at home and accepted at GameStop; these are my people.

Being a sucker for nerds and games and being stuck in a strip mall with nothing to do, I bought two new games last night: Final Fantasy IV Advance for the GBA and Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube. For you douchebags out there is a re-re-release of what was Final Fantasy IV in Japan and Final Fantasy II in the USA for the SNES and is, in my opinion, the second best game in the Final Fantasy series (second to FFVII, of course). Now, in an admission that will bring shame on my entire family, I’ve never actually beat FFIV. I’ve played it multiple times on an emulator on my computer, getting to the very end several times. Predictably, for me, I got distracted by some other game and never finished. I’m hoping that adding mobility to the game by having it on a handheld will allow me to play it more often and get through it.

The other game, Resident Evil 4 I purchased because everywhere I looked, people where saying that it’s one of the best Gamecube games out there. I’m not one for either FPS (I glogged about this a little earlier) or the horror genre (I still watch scary movies from under a blanket), but I can’t ignore all the great reviews of this game. I’ll let you know how it goes, though don’t expect much. Playing a type of game I suck at from under a blanket can’t produce any good resuls.

A rash of thefts

There’s been several low-profile thefts around my office lately. Someone had a hundred-dollar bill stolen, another is currently sans-iPod. Sadly, even I have felt the sting of victimization: someone stole my pennies.

I loathe pennies, a feeling developed from my sister, mainly because they are useless. I never carry them around (NB: my penny-hatred doesn’t stop me from becoming infuriated whenever anything I buy comes to some dollars and $0.01) and most of the ones I unfortunately obtain through sales transactions are put either in the trash or in a mug on my desk. As of two days ago, this mug was brimming. So full was it that I was actually beginning to re-think my entire opinion about the penny: while the lone penny is useless, in hordes the penny can become a dollar which can, in a pinch, become two Diet Cokes. Recently, someone stole those potential Cokes from me.

Now, as one can hopefully tell from the preceding paragraph, I wasn’t really attached to these pennies. Regardless, I am upset over the violation of principle, that principle being don’t steal shit from my desk. I’m not an overly-principled person, but this one in particular I like to see upheld. The stuff on my desk is mine, and is there because it is mine and because it can’t fit in my desk. If I wanted it stolen, I would have put it on my office-mate’s desk and labeled it “Steal Me,” like I do with all his stuff.

Reunitation!

A bunch of old college friends and I got together this weekend for what ended up being one of the greatest basketball games ever played. Though I wasn’t sitting as close as I normally do (sold my season ticket for $200!), it didn’t diminish the glory of Georgetown’s victory over Duke this past Saturday, 87-84. Back-door cuts abounded in an offensive explosion on the part of Georgetown. We’ve never played so well, and our whole offense really clicked for the first time this season.

It was also very nice to hang out with the ol’ gang again. What was most nice was that we didn’t get together and re-live college. Sure, we talked some about college friends and did a power hour, but we also talked a lot about what we were all up to now and had a good time as slightly-above college-aged young adults. I guess what we did was similar to what we did in college except it cost a lot more. Still, the drunken revelry was enjoyed by all, perhaps on an even higher level than in college. Perhaps not, though it was still a great time.

As a brief aside, the title of today’s post comes from the girlfriend of my college roommate, and a good friend of mine as well. As we parted ways at the end of the night on Saturday, we discussed how great it was to hang out again. She then called the past night our reunitation, which I took to mean we should hang out more. The word may be more nuanced than that, but I doubt it.

Lazy Sundays

After nearly binge-drinking to death on Saturday night, all I could muster myself to do on Sunday was play video games. I bounced back-and-forth between Clan Lord (experience my first Noid invasion, quite scary), Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Super Mario Strikers, which I haven’t yet glogged about. It’s a great game, though play bears very little resemblance to actual soccer. There is very little throwing of blue shells that freeze players in a real game of soccer. Of course, since soccer can often be boring (and this coming from someone who even played the game in high school), jazzing it up with cartoon violence makes for a very fun game. It’s the perfect game to play hungover. It requires no thought, little strategy, and only some reflexes. After yesterday’s marathon sessions, I’m slightly better than I was when I first got the game. My brother and I played an all night Strikers marathon on Christmas Day. While the two of us found enough of a groove to beat the Rookie AI, we fell into some immediate trouble on Professional. Now, I’ve gained enough skill to win consistently at Professional. I’ll have to beat the crap out of the bro when I see him next.

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Here’s a quick update on my progress through FFTA. It can be best summarized thusly: slowly but ass-kickingly. I am taking my sweet time with this game, but it pays off in how amazing my party is. If my Assassin is ever in a battle, I will win. Add my Sage to that mix, and I will make you cry. If I ever play FFTA again (which is practically assured, because it’s so good) I will make my party almost entirely of these two classes. A few Assassins, a few Sages, a Ninja, a Blue Mage, an Alchemist, a Summoner, and maybe a Time Mage. I would be an even greater disaster in the land of Ivalice than I am now.

Horace rocks!

It’s been more or less a quiet week in terms of gaming. I’m trepidatious about continuing Mario Kart because the races that I now must beat are all at the 150cc level, which is sure to embarrass me. All the gaming I’ve done this week has been the occasional jaunt into Puddleby (town center of Clan Lord) to give Horace Danderful some loving. Contrary to the title of this post, Horace doesn’t really rock yet. He can kill Large Vermine without too much trouble, but the larger critters still either kill him or bring him quite low. Regardless of his actually rocking abilities, I still think he rocks. He’s certainly come a long way since his humble beginnings.

Mario Kart DS

My brother and I purchased this game for one another for Christmas to provide us with another way of keeping in touch via gaming. While we haven’t yet conquered the technical hurdles to allow us to play against one another, we have both individually played a lot. I’ll admit that I never really liked the previous installations of Mario Kart, though this is more due to the fact that I sucked and was always playing against people that did not suck than there being anything wrong with the older versions. Having the game for the DS and not having any friends, I’ve been able to privately, in the comfort of my living room, learn how to play the game. The mechanics are simple and highly addictive. With no realism to get in the way, the game is pure fun. I’m still not that great (I take long turns), but I’ll hopefully be decent enough to give the bro a run for his money once we both get online with it.

Hiatus from writing, not from gaming

I’ve actually played more games recently than I have played in recent memory. I’m on quite a tear. Most of my time has been taken by my new obsession, Clan Lord. It’s Mac-only (for the moment; I’ve heard that a Java/Windows client is in the works) MMORPG. I steer away from online games, for several reasons:

• Despite loving video games, I’m not that great at many of them. The exact opposite is true of most people who play games online. I’m a pansy, and have no desire to pay money to have my ass beat. If I ever develop some skills I’m sure this will change, because I love beating ass.
• Many online players are adolescent jerks. I hate this “class” of gamer. They can’t type a proper sentence, using AIM code instead of actual punctuation. For me, there’s nothing worse than losing to a bunch of illiterate wankers over and over again.
• If, God forbid, you ask for help in one of these games, you immediately are pegged for a noob, butchered, and probably insulted with a reference to the male genitalia. There’s no chivalry or common decency online generally, and I’ve found it’s worse in online games.

These are the main reasons I avoid online games. However, ever since reading about Clan Lord, I’ve wanted to try it. I liked that it was Mac-only, as Mac users are a better sort of people than our unfortunate brethren on the Wintel side of the evolutionary chart. Regardless, I remained doubtful, though bit the bullet and tried CL anyway. I was surprised by a number of things about the game. It’s a great deal of fun, bearing a unique fighting system and allowing one a great deal of character customization. However, what shocked me most was how nice everyone was. The first time I logged on, I was warmly greeted and shown around town by numerous players (a chap named Bladebringer, to be specific): no pk’ing, teamkilling, or noob harassment. I’ve been an exile for over a month now, and I’ve found CL to be a game to which I keep returning. Horace Danderful (my character) still dies a lot, but he’s a lot better than when I started and I’m pumped about playing him every time I step into Puddleby. If you own a Mac and can afford $10/month (less with a year advance payment, which is what I’ll be doing once my initial months run out), you should definitely play. It’ll get you hooked.

Open source software

I use a lot of open source software. To be more exact, I have a lot of open source software on my computer. I actually use only a few programs, notably OpenOffice and Vim. I especially love using Vim because of the status it gives me among nerds. Despite my haplessness with computer programming, I can still impress geeks everywhere with my (mild) proficiency with Vim. It gives me something to talk about with strict Unix users.

I mention all this simply to welcome you into my addiction: trying new software all the time just because I can. I love all the different possibilities with the free software that exists today, even though I don’t need to or can’t use a majority of it. For example, I just downloaded a beta of Seamonkey, the successor to the now discontinued Mozilla suite. I’m perfectly content with my current Gecko-based browser, Camino, but still felt the need to download and try Seamonkey. I have or have had tons of other crap on my hard drive at some point: Abiword, jEdit, even the GIMP, and I don’t even take pictures, much less ever need to manipulate them.

In drafting this post, which was going to mostly be a discussion of various web browsers and my opinions of them, I’ve realized that I should create a Reviews section. So I have. You can navigate there with the link in this paragraph or from the top. For now, it just has what I think about browsers, but will include a random assortment of crap soon, like books and stuff. I think I’m going to avoid games in this section, simply because I have a lot of opinions about games and don’t want to crowd the section.

Oh, and Happy New Year.