I think I missed last week's update. You know, a lot happens in two weeks. I knew I played games, but when I first went to write this post, I couldn't remember much. Well, I played a lot. I beat LittleBigPlanet, Gears of War 2, The Ship, and Azure Dreams. I've also been playing World of Warcraft, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Team Fortress 2, Audiosurf, and Thousand Arms.

The night I made my last Game Journal post I was able to finish LittleBigPlanet. I moved on to play some community games a bit but didn't play too much. I wrote a full review of it here and on GameFAQs so I won't go into more detail.

I bought Gears of War 2 soon after that and finished it after a couple days. It was really excellent. I had a lot of fun, and it showed some awesome things that fans of the first game should be excited about. I haven't yet played co-op or horde mode yet (or the regular multiplayer, but I don't really care about that). I'm looking forward to horde mode sometime soon and possibly attempting co-op on Insane mode with my roommate Collin.

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LittleBigPlanet is a fun Playstation 3 platformer created by Media Molecule with a lot of character and a great vision. It was fun and stars a memorable character, Sackboy. The physics engine is something far above other 2D platforming games. However, the game suffers from bugs and physics that, while advanced, gives players less precise controls than they had over Mario back on the NES.

If you want to know how I feel about this game without taking the time to read my whole review, I can give a quick summary. LittleBigPlanet is a lot of fun and has a lot of nice ideas, but implements many of them very badly. The game was good but not amazing and revolutionary as it may have seemed. Sackboy is a cute, fun character. I could see him becoming a mascot for Sony, but I do not see him seriously competing with Mario or even Sonic. I really enjoyed LittleBigPlanet and will definitely purchase the sequel when it's released; however, the game was far from astounding.

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Happy birthday Miyamoto! Thanks for the wonderful games!

Note: I'm dating this one week ahead of when I actually wrote it so that it'll stay at the top of WebPageless for a week. I'll restore the date to it's correct value next week.

Obama won the presidency obviously. I wish I had more to say on it, but I really don't. I wanted him to win, and I'm glad he did. But I have other things on my mind.

For instance, how the fuck did California proposition 8 pass? What the hell is wrong with people? People learn as they grow up that discrimination is wrong, but obviously people don't really feel like that. They might decide that gender discrimination is wrong or that racial discrimination is wrong, but then we "protect families" by now allowing gays to marry? How does that protect the families they're trying to create? I'm completely sickened by anyone who voted yes on proposition 8.

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I wasn't going to buy Gears of War 2 because I was trying to cut back on games purchases, but then it came out today and I couldn't resist the bromance!

Okay I need to go play games now.

This past week I've played a substantial amount of Rock Band 2. We beat it last night actually. I also bought all the Weezer and Oasis tracks for gem and all the Who tracks for myself. I need to pick up Boston, Rush, and The Police also. I put some more time into LittleBigPlanet a little. I'm on the last level of the game and should be able to beat it tonight. I started playing Azure Dreams a tiny bit more and have been playing Ninjatown in bed and when I'm out. It's a surprisingly fun little tower defense game for the DS. I don't think I'd really recommend purchasing it new, but it is fun to play.

I also got back into Bioshock a little. It's hard to play because it really stresses me out. However, I did manage to kill Dr. Steinman. I think it was a really cool scene. The fight itself wasn't that exciting because I'm playing on easy. Still, I chose that because I'm not looking for challenging gameplay; I'm looking for the mood the game presents and to a lesser extent, the plot and message the game tries to portray (if it does indeed have a message, which I suspect it will).

Lastly, I played a small amount of Wario Land 2 and Professor Layton and the Curious Village this week. Good times!

(12:40:32 PM) Christine Keh: my attitude about people has changed
(12:40:35 PM) Christine Keh: i still hate them
(12:40:51 PM) Christine Keh: but once you realize all people suck and you just have to look past that suckiness
(12:40:53 PM) Christine Keh: it gets better

I'm late with my weekly game recap again, hm?

I bought LittleBigPlanet when it launched last week. It's been pretty fun so far. The difficulty spiked at one point, but I think it was my fault. It's a side-scrolling platformer with three levels of depth. There have been some issues with the game guessing the depth in which I want to be and causing me pain. I've also been squished and killed by simply walking under an object. I think if the game lets you just press right and walk under an object, it shouldn't kill you. These are minor issues usually, but I notice them even more in heavily hyped games.

On Halloween night I got a new mask and some candy in Guild Wars by participating in the Mad King Thorn events again. I also played World of Warcraft a little just to trick-or-treat and visit the candy jack-o-lanterns in the inns of Kalimdor. I did manage to get that achievement! I haven't yet been able to succeed at the quest in which you put out fires.

I played Zombies Ate My Neighbors a little, but it wasn't satisfying my craving for Halloween games. I managed to get half way through level two, which is much farther than I've ever been. Wip3out Pure has been fun. I play it every now and then just for small amounts of time. It's pretty fun. Lastly, today I played a little Azure Dreams again for the first time in months. It's fun in a monotonous way. Maybe I'll beat it someday.

If you're too old to go trick or treating, which you are if you're reading my blog, what should you do tonight? What about if you're not cool enough to go to a club and look like a womanizing asshole by posing with a girl on each side of you (or dressing slutty and going out if you're a girl, which again, you're not if you're reading this)? Halloween gaming, of course!

I like to watch Halloween movies and play Halloween games during this season. I think my favorite to play is Halloween Loco Roco, but I always end up playing MMOs.

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Line's long as shit.

I'm so tired. Information overload in these classes. I think circuits class might actually kill me.

For those who haven't heard, the Hellgate: London servers will be taken offline on January 31, 2009. It makes me pretty sad. The game had a bad launch and was buggy, but even with all those bugs, I played it for a while at launch and enjoyed it! Now the bugs are removed. Why is it doing so badly? It's not the best game I've played, but it was fun. I also really enjoyed Mel Odom's novels based in the Hellgate: London universe. His writing's flawed (and rushed), but they were fun reads. The third and final book in his trilogy recently came out. It left me wanting more at the end. I felt like it didn't really close everything I wanted closed. Hopefully someone will write more, but I'm very confident it'll happen. Anyways, I do hope to finish Hellgate: London with my online character before the servers go offline, and I definitely could see myself playing more LAN Hellgate in the future!

Source: http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/10/24/hellgate-london-online-servers-to-shut-down-jan-31/.

I really should have written about everything that happened the weekend of October 11, but I've been pretty busy and lazy.

I saw The Cab, Plain White T's, Dashboard Confessional, and Panic at the Disco. Then I took the train to San Diego and went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo!

It was a really awesome weekend.

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I didn't make my goal of posting by Thursday in my Game Journal. I bought Rock Band 2 when the bundle was released and have been enjoying that. I've mostly been playing with gemma and Andy. My brother joined for a bit the first day, and I've played Duncan, Collin, and Vincent a little. I made a really slutty girl called Kitty Kat. My brother made Sluts McGee, lol. I also rented Rock Band 1 and paid the $5 to rip the music for RB2. It gives a pretty nice selection of songs!

That's about all I've been doing. I started the tutorial for Sim City 4 but got bored, and I've played Frontlines: Fuel of War a little. I'm looking forward to Little Big Planet later today though!

Dentist, originally uploaded by theuser.

Wahh. Super high blood pressure too! No surprise. It might cause
problems they said.

I haven't played anything new this week. I played some more Kirby Super Star Ultra, finally beating The Arena, which has you fight 20 bosses in a row. Now I'm stuck in the mode called Helper to Hero. In this mode you play as one of Kirby's helpers, going against 13 bosses in a row plus a secret boss I wasn't expecting :( I also logged into WoW this week to check out achievements and the new pet system. It was interesting, but I didn't stay logged in more than five minutes.

AMTRAK Hot Dog, originally uploaded by theuser.

AMTRAK hot dog... Mmm.

luvcraft made a nice post over at InsertCredit in which he lists good, free PC games. He's giving a mid-range PC to his friend for his birthday and is filling it with games. It's a pretty great gift I think. It costs a not insignificant yet not extremely high price and shows that he really cares and put thought into it. Of course, what I really like is the nicely compiled lists of games. I'm surprised to see Dan Da Dan on there! I really liked that vertical shmup.

I played and beat Spore last Saturday. I also played a couple levels of Kirby Super Star Ultra this week.

Stupid school.

I can't focus on the lecture at all. The professor's talking about switches and transistors. My notes are open, but I don't know what to write down so I've written nothing. Twenty-three more minutes.

SelectButton had a thread about playing games in public, and I thought it was interesting. It was about feeling embarrassed or enjoying it, seeing other people playing, meeting new people, etc.

Original thread

I play both my DS and PSP in classes all the time. It depends on the class, but in a lot of classes I can pay attention and play at the same time pretty easily. Games that you can put down at any moment are the best to play.

While my girlfriend was at a salon recently some kid seemed really excited that my PSP was metallic blue and that I was playing sideways. I was playing Star Soldier.

In general, I feel fine playing on campus but awkward playing anywhere else. Also, I think playing the PSP is less embarrassing than the DS, although I still play the DS more.

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I bought a new computer. The parts came in Monday, but it's not working yet. Whenever I install the video drivers and reboot, Windows hangs while loading. I have to use Last Known Good Configuration to get it to boot again. I've tried a bunch of different drivers, and none works. I think the video card could be bad. Sometimes when I boot, I don't get any video output. I have to unplug the power from the video card and reseat it. Nine times out of ten that doesn't fix it though. At this point I can't tell if it really does fix it the other time or if it's just me trying repeatedly. I get beep codes on boot too but haven't looked into them too much.

I was also wondering if it was an issue with everything being 64-bit. Despite everything supposedly being compatible, I know 64-bit is relatively new. On top of that, Vista 64-bit is more supported than XP 64-bit. The drivers are for XP x64, but I thought I'd try XP 32-bit or Vista 64-bit.

My only XP CD was old and bad so I asked Collin to burn my legitimate XP Pro with SP2. He said it asked him if he wanted to correct the size of the burn because the disc size was unequal to the image size. He apparently said no to this. The disc didn't work. It couldn't find a file on the disc. I burned the same image on gem's computer and got the same error when I attempted to use it, but the burn also failed verification. Some people on forums had the same error because their discs or drives were dirty, but my drive is brand new and seems to work otherwise (it installed XP x64) and the discs look good.

Next I downloaded Vista Business 64-bit and burned it. It didn't pass verification either and won't work at all. No computer can even recognize it.

Eventually, I'll get another OS on there with which to test the card. If it works, then I know it's a software issue. If it doesn't work, it's most likely a hardware issue and I'll try the card in another computer. My hardware is after the break.

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I've been in school again for over a week! It's alright. CSE 112 is about circuits and is based on the one class I failed at UCI. We took this test on the first day that wasn't worth any points to see how we were at the subject. It was kind of hard =/ I think I'll have some trouble in this class. Today was the discussion's first meeting. Our professor runs discussion as well. He was annoyed that no one had looked at the homework yet that was assigned Tuesday and is due next Tuesday. He wondered why we would show up to discussion if we hadn't looked at it and how he was supposed to help us with it. It really annoyed me. How were we supposed to know he was going to go over the homework?

CSE 151 is about VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integrated - integrated circuits). He said he expects us to have taken and be familiar with CSE 112 even though it's not a prereq. He also won't let us switch into a discussion because it's waitlisted. We're at slots 1 and 2. The discussion in which we're enrolled conflicts with a class we're trying to add. The TA doesn't mind us going to the full discussion, and it's not like we even need to go! I don't know what we'll do about that.

CSE 135A is about signals. It's prereq is another class I really hated. He wouldn't let us add unless we passed a test. It was really hard, but we both passed. He signed our add cards, but it conflicts with that discussion. Not sure what'll happen. Maybe add cards ignore schedule conflicts? If so, we could just not go to discussion.

Lastly, I'm taking senior design project course. I'm working with gem, Corey, and his brother. Hopefully it'll go alright!

What have I been playing this week? I played a bunch more Samba de Amigo. I'm getting better at it. The controls still aren't great, but they're not terrible. The game's pretty fun! I've also been playing a lot of Kirby Super Star Ultra. It's still one of the best games ever!

Super Ice, originally uploaded by theuser.

Kaisen gave me super ice today.

I was trying to make a post every Monday about what I was playing, but that kind of faded away. I don't know if I'll keep up with one a week, but here's what I've been playing lately:

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Andrew [2:33 PM]:
...
I think I'd have an email saying he was gonna be out tho
Peter [2:34 PM]:
hm, that's true
Andrew [2:34 PM]:
I got an email that "The elevator will be out for next 1-2 days."
so ... maybe his nickname is the elevator
Peter [2:34 PM]:
...
dude that would be bad ass nick name
"You wanna fuck with the elevator? DO YOU?! I'm taking you down!"
Andrew [2:35 PM]:
lol
haha!
wow
that actually kinda works
Peter Anargirou [2:35 PM]:
lol

Bear Sponge, originally uploaded by theuser.

My girlfriend bought this bear sponge earlier this week. Cute, isn't
it? We've been together 47 months today.

Today (9/9) I played a new Bemani game by Konami called UBeat. It's being location tested here in Irvine, CA at a Boomers. According to Wikipedia, it was released last month in Japan. Irvine gets the only two UBeat cabinets outside of Asia!

Ubeat, originally uploaded by theuser.

The first thing I noticed about it was, of course, the aesthetics of the unit. Being a music game, it had to have a light of glowing parts and lights, but it really did look pretty cool. It had a crisp, nice quality LCD screen to show your score and other information, and it had 16 LCD buttons arranged in a grid. As songs play, the LCD buttons play little ~1 second animations to the rhythm. You have to press the button at a particular point in the animation. You can choose from a few animations. I chose fireworks; When the firework reached the top of the button, you press it to see the firework explode. It's a lot like DDR meets Whac-A-Mole, and it was a lot of fun!

The song list was pretty interesting. It had a good mix of songs that were already known in America and Japanese songs that I assume were from the Japanese version of the game. I played "Take on Me" by a-ha, "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" by Scatman John, and "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People (because what heterosexual guy playing a Bemani game with his girlfriend watching can resist the Village People?). I was surprised and pleased to find Scatman John in the game; He's an artist I really like.

The game displayed the name of the arcade and a player name although it was set to defaults. It looked like there was a way to store accounts or something similar but that the feature was not implemented. Like other Bemani games, each song had a different difficulty rating between one and ten, and the difficulty could be raised. In more complex songs, multiple panels lit up at the same time, requiring players to press multiple buttons with a single hand, often in rapid succession. The machine itself was very narrow and elegant looking. This is a plus because it means arcades can fit them in easier. From the interface, I think it supports up to four cabinets in local play. The small form factor means it's more likely to see arcades actually buy four cabinets.

There were two cabinets here so multiplayer was an option although I didn't try it. It looked like the cabinets were plugged into a router/hub, and when I checked online, I found out that you can play online as well. I'm not sure how that works though. Boomers was also location testing Dance Dance Revolution X, which I haven't had a chance to try yet. I'm definitely going back this week to play UBeat some more and possibly try the new DDR. Here's hoping UBeat catches on here in the states!

The Dreamcast is nine years old today! Don't worry little buddy; I'll always treasure you, and 9/9/99 will always be a special date. I promise there will be a big (okay, probably small) party for you at my place on 9/9/9!

Epic Krabys, originally uploaded by theuser.

My Epic Krabys coming to attack gem's trexi and company. He killed them! :(
Look how cute her trexi is too there in the center with the pom-pom!

Wall-E Art, originally uploaded by theuser.

Wall-E made out of canned food at South Coast Plaza on Saturday. It
was pretty cool. I'm not really sure why it was there, but I enjoyed
seeing it!

Can of Paint in Cans, originally uploaded by theuser.

At South Coast yesterday there was a display of an overflowing can of
red paint made out of canned foods.

Wii Fit Merchandise, originally uploaded by theuser.

People complained about the number of worthless Wii peripherals, but
look at all the worthless Wii Fit crap!

Andrew [2:33 PM]:
do you guys ever let your headphone bar thing that goes over your head slip down over your eyes like it's an eye-glasses laser cannon?

Peter [2:34 PM]:
Well I definitely need to try it now

Ethan [2:34 PM]:
...

Andrew [2:34 PM]:
lol

Ethan [2:34 PM]:
*blinks*...i'm trying to imagine it

Andrew [2:34 PM]:
my muffs are much bigger
so when the start to slip... I just let it happen sometimes
I kinda feel like a fighter pilot...
and luke skywalker
I can't see shit

Ethan [2:34 PM]:
lol

Andrew [2:35 PM]:
lol
so Diana just walked in here...

Ethan [2:35 PM]:
uh huh

Andrew [2:35 PM]:
and I totally thought it was gonna be peter coming to see my cool muffs...

Ethan [2:35 PM]:
LOL

Peter [2:35 PM]:
ahhaha

Andrew [2:35 PM]:
so I turned around w/ my muff visors ...

Peter [2:35 PM]:
klsdfjhldsf

Ethan [2:35 PM]:
OMG LOL
lol

Peter [2:35 PM]:
coughing
cant breath

Ethan [2:36 PM]:
im trying to imagine her face
lol

Peter [2:36 PM]:
I can't stop laughing

Ethan [2:36 PM]:
and andrew, rolling around his chair to turn to her
and his visor's on
lol
omg it's really hard not to laugh here
XD

Andrew [2:36 PM]:
I can't dude
Im giggling :(
okay
control
gotta work ...

Ethan [2:37 PM]:
lol

EA has released Red Alert as a free download as a promotion for Red Alert 3! You can also get Red Alert 2 for free by pre-ordering Red Alert 3. Alright, go download it!

• A Horde guild wedding cake
• Team ICO has a fan in Pan's Labyrinth director - Guillermo del Toro calls Ico and Shadow of the Colossus the only game masterpieces.
• Mod that: 5 of our favorite GameCubes - Very cool mods!
• WoW to store UI settings server-side post-Lich King
• Wii clone arcade machine - "winner"

When I was younger, gaming was a very social activity. My friends would come over and spend all weekend (and all summer) sitting with my playing video games. Sometimes we would take turns, and sometimes we'd play against one another. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of playing co-op Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 on SNES with my friend Adi, taking turns playing Super Mario Kart (and later Mario Kart 64), playing Clue on SNES, and playing a shit ton of Kirby's Dream Course. This has become more and more rare. Hell, now multiplayer primarily means shooting each other online. Sure, it's fun. But I miss the other stuff. Multiplayer used to mean multiple players. Now it implies a deathmatch style competitive game. Playing together through a story mode is now called co-op. Both co-op and multiplayer games are now online and rarely local. Local play is where the real fun is.

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Wired put up a story called Top 5 Gadgets That Could Get You Arrested. Interesting read for technophiles. It talks about a pretty nice laser I'd like to have... if I had an extra two grand.

• After 1,500 years, pagans plan Acropolis prayer
• Plan aims to save Britain's red phone booths

William pointed me to an article at The Hottest Gadgets that shows 25 really awesome video game related mods. My favorites are the SNES in a Wii case and the Rainbow Six Vegas cityscape with a PS3 as one of the buildings. It's gorgeous!

Scalzi posted that his book Zoe's Tale is currently the number one Kindle sci-fi book on Amazon, beating out Stephenie Meyer's The Host! w00t!

• Virus Infects Space Station Laptops (Again)
• Google Earth Reveals Sixth Sense of Cattle, Deer
• iPhone: iLive dev iPwnd for 'stealing' rival's data

WebMonkey reports on an excellent sounding plugin for Firefox called Ubiquity. Using everyday English input, users can perform specific tasks on the web. For example, typing the word "twitter" followed by any other text will post that text on your twitter. This should eventually allow everyday users do complex things on the web, even mashing together multiple web applications.

I found a funny commentary about the effect of the iPhone on everyday life over on Wired. It's an entertaining read.

It's no secret that I'm totally looking forward to Samba de Amigo. I really enjoy rhythm games, this has a bunch of cool songs I haven't seen in other games, and I also really like Sega mascot characters. It's nice to see this game coming out! Joystiq has some information about the maracas, which are gorgeous, and a full song list. Looks good!

In an article titled Counting Rupees: Sustainable Indies, Joystiq examines the cost of Braid to Blow, how much he made, and how much he needs to make. He has sold 55K copies of the game, yielding $825K. After Microsoft's cut, that's $578K. The article suggests that he invested $180K of his own money and that the cost of the game was probably near $400K. That means he's just breaking even now. For Blow to have enough money to make another game without having to take out loans, Braid would need to sell one million copies.

Penny Arcade has an entertaining strip involving Storm Troopers. It's especially appropriate given the recent demo of The Force Unleashed.

Exploits of a Mom has to be the best one.