Remember When I Used to Post?

I do.  Those were good times.

Wellp, just a quick update for those who are probably already in the know.  Classes are fine, I’ve been truckin’ along with very little homework so far.  My room is a mess right now, but I blame the weekend for that (a weekend that was, by the way, the best ever–the heat was sucky, and cramps and a messed up ear were somewhat unfortunate, but I had the best time ever so it really evens out).  Cans and bottles and plastic bags EVERWHERE.

Art has been…ehhhhhhh.  I’ve been doing a lot of sketching, which is good practice.  However, my scanner is, for lack of a better word, screwed.  I left the power cord at home–all 3-ish hours and a lot of road away–which means I have no way of POSTING these things I draw.  So I rely on my BRAND NEW PHOTOSHOP CS4 and my beloved, battered tablet as a drawing medium if I am working on something I would like to post at some point between now and the middle of October MAYBE.  Such is the life of a college student I suppose.

As for the club, Savvy-dear has started college like the rest of us, so a serious constraint has been placed on the club and the management thereof.  We have switched to a method of Will and I reviewing apps then sending what we think of them to Savvy for her later approval/disapproval.  It’s a bit slower, but it’s pretty consistent.  And since Will and I are much less busy, we are perfectly free to be checking the club regularly.  Slick business.

I could babble about the weekend ad nauseum like I did last time, but I will keep this as brief as it was in the first (ish) paragraph.  It was the best ever.  Hot as hell, and various parts of my body decided to rebel against me to CAUSE ME PAIN AND SUFFERING, but they could not deter my happiness, I mean it.  Hooray!  Four day weekends make everything better, and now it’s one day closer to the next weekend I will ramble about.

I realize I am much more proud of my writing when I have something to complain about.  Mayhaps I will begin writing pointlessly argumentative blog posts just for the lulz!

That’s all for now, folks.  I am off to draw a new character sheet for Xalna.  I shall catch y’all when I next post (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later).

BONUS:

Really, it speaks for itself.  I decided to play Portal.  This is pretty much how I am when I play video games (though I usually swear a lot more–a LOT more, it’s like a sailor wandered into my room and decided to make commentary on my great failures by possessing me).  It may become a series!  We will see.

Whoops

I haven’t posted in a while, which is truly a pity ‘cuz lots of stuff has been going on!  Let’s move semi-chronologically.

Firstly!  My trip to Bellevue outlined in my last post (woo driving adventure) was truly excellent.  I was initially unbelievably nervous about it since I had little to no contact with Will (cell phone reception = NOPE SORRY LOL), plus I would be driving to an unfamiliar place to meet unfamiliar people.  And as some may know, this is one of my worst fears.  I am often concerned I will be judged in some manner if people see me doing stuff that I don’t understand or…somsuch.  Anyway, the actual drive to Bellevue wasn’t hard at all, and once I got into the town, I found that Google Maps had led me not to the State Park but to a cemetary.  SUCCESS.  So I called Mark, who got me to an entrance into the park.  Unfortunately, I then got ahold of Will (thank God for that–even if he had to use his mom’s phone and therefore a different service provider) and found out it was NOT the right entrance to the park.  Yes, there are several, and they do not connect to each other.  So I floundered around for a while on the highway until I found the proper gravel road and made it to the campground.

I met his family and all of their friends and such, which was overwhelming in terms of name-learning but very fun nonetheless.  They were very…talkative.  In a very friendly, open way.  I was terribly amused by the conversations I observed and heard–it was a lot like hanging out with my dad’s side of the family (minus the unbelievable volume of swearing, haha).  Anyway, after a lot of hanging with Will while food was consumed (their breakfast–I had eaten before starting out on the road), we all crammed into a few cars and drove to Galena to mill about the shops and such.  I didn’t buy anything (I had forgotten my wallet in the car, and I didn’t want to impose when it was offered–plus I didn’t really want anything anyway, I was just enjoying the trip), though I did get ice cream with Will at one point which–I may say meekly and with a kind of embarassed sappiness–was kind of really adorable to me because it was in one of those old-fashioned-looking parlours and even if it was updated otherwise, it was kind of super cute and…I dunno.  Eating ice cream with your bo is kind of traditionally adorable.  …Don’t kill me.  I am overly romantic in most ways.  BUT ANYWAY IT WAS COOL, I LOVE ICE CREAM HAHA.

Then we all went back to the campgrounds and had dinner after they played some games (like the bean bag tossing one with which I am so familiar, plus…this strange…beercan…frisbee…thing that I had never even seen before, go figure there), and that was delicious.  Then I had to go home (sadface).  The drive back was much less interesting, and I ended up yawning a lot, so I switched out the Star Trek soundtrack for loud rock music that I could sing along to.  Win.

SO THAT WAS SATURDAY.  I had a lot of fun, it was really nice to meet all them peoples and spend some time with the boy, who I probably won’t see forrrrrr two weeks?  Well, a week and half anyway.  Patience is a virtue I am learning to accept–usually I am pretty good after an initial emo moment.  In any case, I am looking forward to the next visit.  Hee.

On to things that are probably of more interest to people other than me, art!  Lots of art has been going down.  I started in on a comic for my dear friend (and fellow admin./superior/founder of Org. Nu and Keyblade Brigade) where her character, Xeth’s, beats up this dude and then makes out with my character, Xalna, after she totally scolds him.  Epic win.  I should probably work on that more, though, since I am up to page 6 and then got distracted.  And everything from 7 on is really interesting!  Like thee FIGHT and the MAKIN’ OUT.  Motivation, I choose you!

Aaaand I was told about an OC tournament!  Just in time–I was recently missing the good ol’ days of Dark Kingdom and 9 Levels (which never really got past the second round…that is a cryin’ shame, if I do say so myself).  It’s a really interesting one; you enter an artist (usually yourself in some incarnation or another) into this world where you can use some item to summon up to 3 original characters to fight for you.  It is kind of like Pokemon battles, but there is an artist instead, and the Pokemon can talk and be…humanoid.  And there’s no capturing.  And you don’t have to collect anything.  Okay, it isn’t a LOT like Pokemon.  But I digress.  I am entering myself under the name GG for the artist, and I can summon Tek and Noirei using my cell phone, hurr hurr.  I have missed those boys, though, so it’s nice to give them a fresh new look and let them run amok in a new setting.  Here’s hoping I get in!  I really need to finish my audition comic, then I can actually submit my entry (I already did all three character sheets).  Since it’s based more around writing than artistic merit, I made sure to choose characters that I can be frustrated with (instead of them just listening to whatever I wanted them to do) and that don’t get along with each other.  Much more interesting that way.

Plus the shiny new versions of Tek and Noirei have made me start rethinking Miles 7, which has been so sadly neglected for…what, the past two years?  I think that is pretty possible.  Anyway, I have been reformatting the history leading up to the main plot, and I’m reworking the way half-demons look, act, function, etc.  Plus Lakai got one more change to her design (along with the last few, which included a height change, a new eyecolor, and a different coloring for her hair)–she is finally losing the paper white skin.  I KNOW, it is shocking.  But I figure all the half-demon markings should correspond to their color (red markings for red half-demons, yellow for yellow half-demons, and so on and so forth), so…she needs white markings, and with white skin, white markings will not show up too well.  Hence, she is going to have darker skin!  On top of that, she has always been drawn to look somewhat middle-eastern or somesuch, so this makes more sense, honestly.  It should be a big difference, but I think I will be very pleased.  Plus the plot might be taking some pretty hard hits as far as changes go, but who knows!  I am still working it out.  I don’t know if/when I’ll actually go back and start rewriting parts, but it’s nice to start in on the process of updating it.  It needed it–badly.

Oh, I still haven’t found a paying job for the summer, but I DO have an unpaid internship!  I will officially be spending, ehhhhh, 3 or 4 hours a day working at KLJB, a local TV station (where my mom used to work–like, 20 years ago…and everyone who still works there remembers when I was a baby, haha, awkward-ish).  I figure I can do graphic design stuff, some editing (since I have experience there), and they seem to want me to blog perhaps.  I think this is because I mentioned that I can blog and while they have on for the station, no one has even touched it.  Ah well, that will be interesting.  The best thing about it, though, is that my boss remembers me from when I was little and was really close friends with my mom.  Furthermore, he plays video games.  EXCELLENT.  He had a desktop of the cake from the end of Portal surrounded by Companion Cubes.  We spent an hour talking about Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and watching YouTube videos.  I think this is promising.

Movies!  I won’t delve heavily into this one, but MAN is the new Star Trek good.  My love for it is, like, borderline Pirates of the Caribbean-caliber, and that is hard to achieve.  I have already made a fancharacter and started babbling about it to my mom–who, fortunately, loves Star Trek and therefore enjoys and understands our conversations.  We also started watching some of the older movies, which are actually pretty dang good.  So I highly recommend seeing it.  I have seen it twice now, and I am going to see it again with Grace and her mom and sister, I think.  HOORAY.

Laaaastly, on the gaming side, I took a heavy break from FF7 and lost motivation to play it, but instead I decided to start up a new game of FF8.  As one might expect, I am blogging the journey.  Anyone who wants to read my numerous complaints, bragging, training strategies, and healthy doses of my opinion, the URL is:

ff8garden.wordpress.com

I think that about covers everything.  I have a lot of work and interesting stuff coming up, so I will do my best to keep this page updated with all of that craziness.  Catch y’all later!

Quick Update

Because perhaps I should update something other than the FF7 blog.  Seriously.  Nearly 2000 words in one post.

This has been a very good week.  Like, unusually so.  I haven’t had much homework, so I’ve been able to just chill out in the evenings, chat on AIM and play video games.  I got a few drawings done–I’m going to do a big FF7 collage (because I haven’t done one of those in a while), I designed a new character (someone should stop me–this time, it’s a member of Team Rocket…), and I just generally doodled some characters from the Wheel of Time books and my Org. Nu character.  I also wrote a section for the latest event in that club.  I am switching back and forth with Savvy to finish our collaborative mission.  I think it’s due this weekend, though…I’m not sure I’m going to get my next section done.  Whoops.  We’ve been a little tardy on finishing the whole thing, I admit.

Further, I am going home tonight!  My high school’s musical is this weekend, and I have a variety of friends going home for it.  Fortunately, one of them goes to the same school as Will, so she is picking him up (and she is a saint, since she doesn’t even know him and gets to ride with him in the car for an hour and a half until they get here) and coming to get me, then it’s 2 and a half hours until we’re home.  It’s going to be late when we get back.  That’s alright, though.  I get to be home, see the musical and all my Theatre friends, and hang out with Will.  All is right with the world.

Right now I am looking for new ringtones for my phone.  People are getting annoyed with my text ring (I don’t really blame them, it’s obnoxious and goes off a lot), plus I am aching for some new awfully rendered music.  I am kind of a loser like that.  Unfortunately, I can’t find anything I really want.  I am perusing the Final Fantasy 9 songs right now, as there are a few I really like, but I can’t find good arrangements of them.  They’re too quiet, or too incorrect (and that just bugs me), or just…weirdly orchestrated.  It is rather frustrating.

Well, I am off for now.  Until later, y’all.

Sean Connery is EVERYWHERE You Want to Be

Good Lord, I do so love these epic weekends.

Well now, let’s see here.  This has been quite a good week.  And it entailed the most epic set of people ever assembled.  Well, close, anyway.  Four of my best college friends were here, I can’t really complain.

Alright.  Alan arrived on Wednesday and just hung out that night.  He was on Spring Break, and decided to spend the last half of it hanging out here.  And who could blame him, really?  Then, on Thursday, Finley’s little brother was brought to UNI, and Alan’s younger brother drove up, too.  On top of that, Marissa stopped by to join the party.  This made our group add up to 7, which just classifies as several people.  We all went to Burger King that night, and discussed the pros–no cons really–of killing the smaller Finley, different ways to lose the game (which I just did, as did any readers), awkward high school happenings, and other things of that nature.  We then went back to the dorms and watched Iron Man, which is always a good time.

Now, it must be said that for much of this time, I was playing Phantasy Star Universe: Ambitions of the Illuminus.  I had a craving to play Phantasy Star Online and create my own character, and I had lost the disc for the game, so I bought the newer game in the series, which turned out to be a fantastic plan.  On Thursday, I told Alan he should make a character, after he hung out with me whilst I played it for a few hours.  He decided to make Sean Connery.  This was the beginning of the PSU/Sean Connery-themed weekend.

So Friday, David, Alan, and I all went up to Ames to pick up Will.  After a remarkably lively car ride back (I am used to rather quiet rides to and from Ames), we all packed into the room again–this time short several people, as everyone else had gone home to their respective houses or dorms–and once again started up PSU with Sean Connery.  Will also shared the atrocious voice acting in the first PSU game.  I am fairly certain we drove the actual inhabitants of the room crazy with our constant playing of the game…but hey, it was Sean Connery.  We later went to the Pita Pit for dinner.  I have grown to really enjoy that place, even if I get crazy nervous and self-conscious whilst ordering.

After playing a good deal more PSU (I think this was the point at which David pointed out that it was annoying), Will and I went back to my room to actually go to bed, as it was getting really late.  My roommate was staying the night at a friend’s room, so she was not there–until the morning, when she came in to do her morning routine.  Normally, I would not complain…but man her hairdryer is loud.  And she turned the faucet on to its highest setting.  I honestly find it kind of funny how loud it was.  Anyway, after waking up very late (we obviously fell back asleep after she had left), we tromped on over to 4113 again and settled in for another day of PSU.  Finley returned from home around the middle of the day, and David’s “sister”, Alenka also stopped by and hung out.  Later, we were joined by Marissa, too.  Surprisingly, instead of seeming super congested, this was just crazy fun.  We booted up Soul Calibur IV and decided to make the most epic fight; Sean Connery versus Chuck Norris.  After being highly amused at the various awkward attacks and the act of knocking other players’ clothes off, we decided it was time to make Samuel L. Jackson and Morgan Freeman, too.  And after we grew tired of Soul Calibur, there was time for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  There is really nothing like epic Jigglypuff fights, I can say that.

That night went similarly to the night before.  It got really late, so Will and I left, and we ended up staying up way later than we thought because we were engrossed in conversation (I actually don’t know what time it was–neither of us were wearing glasses, and there aren’t any major clocks in my room, just phones and Stephanie’s alarm clock, and I don’t know where that is).  We woke up early-ish, though, and got lunch (as no one else was up yet), then we killed time with internet and guitar until David had to take Marissa to church and Will back to Ames.

The car ride back wasn’t bad.  Good music, friendly conversation, an unusually warm car, and briefly napping on Will’s shoulder (David’s unbelievably loud music woke me up eventually).  As usual, it was sad to see Will go (Note: to anyone who makes a snarky comment here, I will punch you–that aspect of the weekend, which was by far my favorite part, has been SERIOUSLY downplayed in this entry.  I dunno what it was, but this was just a particularly sweet visit…and that definitely factored into the excellence of the weekend.  And look, I didn‘t even go into it, that much.  You know I sacrifice for you readers…), but there’s next weekend to look forward to (and believe me, I do).  Finally, the car ride BACK was surprisingly enjoyable.  I had mostly expected it to be all kinds of awkward, as I was certain I had angered David the night before.  However, we just talked like friends (with the occasional David-style put-down, you know), and we listened to music.  And when we got back–more of watching Alan play as Sean Connery, at least until he had to leave (thus concluding the epic PSU/Sean Connery-themed events of the weekend).

I finished off the evening by talking to Will and Alan (who had gotten home by this point) on AIM and working on my project for 3D.  I finished the dang thing finally, and listened to the 3rd Wheel of Time audio book.  It was a nice, relaxing evening, a good end to one of the best weekends I’ve had lately.

PLUS, my first class got cancelled today, leaving me the morning to make my Playstation emulator work with Final Fantasy 7, so now I’m playing through it with the characters named after my friends.  There’s just nothing like seeing dialogue with familiar names.

More later, folks, perhaps when something equally delightful happens.  It seems to be common these days.

(P.S.  Finley, if you do indeed read this one, I do apologize that I didn’t write a paragraph about you here.  I promise I will next time, you know I‘m good for it.)

Chiggety Check Yourself Before you Wriggety Wreck Yourself

Because I do so love that phrase.  It really has nothing to do with the entry, though.

Ah, it has indeed been a while since last I posted.  Let’s see, let’s see.

Everything has pretty much been awesome.  That sums it up pretty well, I think.

Classes, with a few exceptions, have been pretty delightful.  3D is destroying my brain with frustration (I shan’t go into the whole fiasco, as I am done being angry about it, but it is a tale of woe and teachers changing assignments THROUGHOUT the period given to work on them), and Soc. is really kicking my butt, but those things aside, I can’t complain too much (I actually can’t complain at all, I gave it up for Lent…look how well THAT’S going, haha…).  I am especially enjoying Drawing, surprisingly enough, where I feel I am doing much better than last semester.  Considering that I am actually trying this time, this is not a surprising development.

Socially, I also have no complaints.  Relations with David have been reset to the kind of friendliness we had near the start of first semester, which is awesome.  Finley is a delight as always.  In fact, I need to talk about him extensively here, as he refuses to read these posts unless he is heavily discussed.  He is, as always, quite awesome.  His hair is long and flowing, reminiscent of one of those ridiculous men on the cover of romance novels (but in a good way), and his guitar skillz are unmatched, truly.  He is also a button.  But for serious, he is just as fantastic as usual.  We are enjoying Religions of the World extensively–oh Robinson, your strange little off-topic discussions are so much fun for everyone.

I got to see Grace last week, which was wonderful.  Good Lord, do I miss that girl, I am dearly hoping she’ll  be around this summer so that we may annoy everyone with our squealing, girly, geekiness.  We did not have a ton of time to hang out (nothing like the multi-day sessions of nerdiness from days of olde–playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, watching the Nightmare Before Christmas…throwing knives in my backyard to be like Will Turner…), but we rock-rocked-awn on, watching videos and eating pizza and all that jazz, plus we had the most delightful adventures on Friday.  More on that later, when I talk about Spring Break.

Will is also great.  Just in general, he is great, haha.  This will sound awfully sappy, but we had our first weekend apart since meeting (“aw, boo hoo, Gilly”, I hear you say–well you can just can it, reader), which was very strange, I must say.  He did get to visit on Saturday, though, and see the new house (again, more on that part later), and I know I will be seeing him the next TWO weekends, when he visits here this coming one and I drag him to Davenport with me to see Assumption’s musical the following one.  In any case, things are just super on this front, and as usual in the last few posts, I simply couldn’t be happier.

(Wow, I didn’t notice before now.  My best friend is named Grace, and my boyfriend is named Will.  Will and Grace…)

NOW.  Spring Break.

Spring Break was last week and BOY, are my arms tired.  …Wait, no.  Boy, was it bizarre.  Haha.  See, my parents decided to buy a new house, so they spent the last two months packing for the move.  I arrived home just in time to finish packing MY stuff and move on Friday, just two days before going back to UNI.  The week leading up to the big shindig was strange and semi-chaotic.  Almost everything in the house was in boxes, so we really had no kitchen, living room, dining room, computer room, or basement.  We consumed lots of sammiches and fast food, and my parents took off work to finish the last few boxing duties.  I, on the other hand, got to fill out summer job applications, pack the stuff under my bed, and generally seclude myself in my room, where my cats were trapped for later capturing convenience.  The only real inconvenience, though, was the losing of internet Thursday night.  It’s not like it was that big of a deal–or shouldn’t have been–but for one who stays up so late talking on AIM, it was a ridiculous, minor crisis.  Thank God for texting and Facebook messaging.

Wednesday I went to catch up with my piano teacher, then I scuttled over to Assumption to watch a rehearsal for West Side Story.  It is looking promising–though I am hoping the band gets a little more refined by the time the performance rolls around.  I was thoroughly impressed with accents–not only are none of them from New York, but none of them are Puerto Rican, and with such good accents, I was nearly convinced of both.  However, as great as Brady and Jessica are at singing, and as great as an actress as Jess is turning out to be (sorry Brady, you are good, but you are still Jesus, I’m afraid), Seth and Kathleen are so going to steal the show as Anita and Bernardo.  Their chemistry is amazing, and they are both hilarious and wonderfully talented.  This is not bias, I promise.

Friday was the move.  Grace came to help, as did both of my aunts and a slew of movers.  Grace, Aunt Sue and I were in charge of cat wrangling, which means that after Mom and I managed to somehow trap the cats unhappily in the bathroom in the old house, the three of us had to later return and take the miserable felines OUT of the tiny room and cram them into even tinier cages.  They were not happy, and that is a vast understatement.  At least the caged part shook them up so much that when we put them in the NEW house’s bathroom, they were too shocked to try and escape while we exited the room and shut the door.  After that, Grace and I ran back and forth between the houses, grabbing forgotten items and cleaning up for the new owners.  And then we arranged my room that night, making it look as decent as possible without any accessories, belongings, or a bed (since I got a new daybed for the room and it wasn’t going to arrive until Saturday).

Saturday, Will visited, which means he, too, got shanghaied into lifting heavy things and putting items on very tall shelves (as all the women putting them away were quite short, especially in comparison).  However, there was much gaming to be had (I do love me some Phantasy Star Universe: Ambitions of the Illuminus–character creation for YES), as well as Food Network watching and lounging on my awesome new bed (much to the worry of my mother, I must say).  Plus sandwiches.  I have a new love of wheat bread, mounds of cheddar and swiss, and roast beef.

I got back to school on Sunday (and it was so nice to have internet again), and finished off the break with a nice, relaxing evening.  It was a good week, I must say.  I’m looking forward to getting back home and painting my drab, white room, though.

Oh, I am starting various comic projects.  I think Grace is writing a short script for me to work on, plus I am doing a comic strip-type webcomic with Will about Phantasy Star II, and I am going to FINALLY start Cursed as a weekly webcomic.  Hopefully.  I’ve been doing a lot of concept work, figuring out exactly how I’m going to draw the characters, which has been very fun.  Everyone finally looks unique, I do believe.

I think that is all for now.  More later, plus probably a review of Uncharted, as I realize I never said anything about that wonderful, wonderful game.

Review: Bioshock (Game)

Yup, here’s another one comin’ atcha.

- – - – -

Title: Bioshock

Platform: Xbox 360

Summary: “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”  Enter the world of Rapture, an undersea city built by Andrew Ryan for the success of elbow grease and the common man.  But this ideal city is not as it is described, nor as it appears.  From the moment you–a man named Jack–step out of the bathysphere, the oppressive air of Rapture’s dark secrets set upon you.  Use genetic reengineering to give yourself supernatural powers, fend off the deranged citizens of the lost city, and watch and wait for the terrifying groaning of Big Daddies just down that shadowy hallway, all while trying to make sense of the flashes of memory that come to you.  And pay close attention to the words of Andrew Ryan, would you kindly?  Things are not as they seem.

My Opinion: Like Portal, this was a game I had heard much about prior to playing.  In fact, without really realizing it, I had already seen one of the most crucial scenes as reenacted by someone on YouTube.  Numerous webcomics had hailed Bioshock as brilliant, fascinating, and just plain awesome.  So I decided it couldn’t hurt to ask for it for Christmas.

When I got to school after Christmas break, the game in tow, I sat down in my friends’ room (where my 360 is housed), popped it in the 360, and waited for the game to start up.  I wasn’t actually sure what to expect–I knew the game looked dark.  And Grace had informed me that it was downright terrifying, so I was initially concerned that this would be another Silent Hill situation for me–I love watching the game, but playing it leaves me paralyzed with fear.

However, after the first few bouts of terror, I began to really enjoy the game.  The mechanics were so accessible and–well, powerful that I had no fear of the Splicers that assault you very near to the start of the game.  Heck, just from a standpoint of controlling the character and using powers and weapons, the game succeeds remarkably well.  Usually I am not too skilled with first person shooters, but despite having guns, Bioshock doesn’t feel like a FPS to me.  Perhaps it is the use of plasmids, supernatural powers like shooting fire or freezing things, which are so effective at wiping out enemies efficiently and creatively, that makes the game not only run smoothly but keep it from feeling too much like a traditional survival horror game–which, I suppose, is what it can be considered.  On top of that, it employs the use of finite ammo and EVE, the kind of energy that supports the use of plasmids (interesting note–your ability to use more and more plasmids is increased by another energy known as ADAM; interesting naming, isn’t it?).  However, it is not hard to find ammo at all–not only is it just laying around the city but there are vending machines that spit out not only bullets and syringes of EVE but also first aid kits, food, and sometimes tools to help you hack the security bots stationed around the city.

Artistically, this game is downright gorgeous.  Everything is designed in some mix between 1940s art deco and steampunk decor.  The Splicers are dressed in old fashioned clothing, most donning eerie animal masks.  The Big Daddies look like old fashioned divers–but with the brutal twist of having a gigantic drill or a riveter for a hand.  The various Little Sisters that appear are delightfully creepy, what with their glowing eyes and strangely wise voices.  And the attention to detail is remarkable.  Running on different surfaces makes different noises.  Water drips from the leaking ceilings and walls.  Metal is rusted over, rooms are dismantled, ripped up, sometimes bloody.  Ice melts when one uses Incinerate, anything standing in water is electrocuted when you use Electro Bolt.  Opening drawers will disrupt an entire desk.  Messages are scrawled on walls with God-knows-what.  And there are a myriad of other details that can only be truly appreciated by playing the game.  Even the use of radio messages, recording the thoughts and experiences of the residents of Rapture, enrich the gameplay and give an already unconventional FPS an entirely new depth.

The plot is just wonderful, too.  I can’t say much without giving it away–and that is the last thing I want to do–but it is so fraught with twists and turns, especially for a game whose plot is mainly propelled via radio communication with other characters, that it will leave your head spinning in the best way.  The choices you make throughought the game–picking up different messages, reading the walls, saving Little Sisters or throwing them by the wayside–will drastically affect your gameplay experience, making each play-through unique.  Even the way you can kill is full of options.  And keep in mind that these decisions you make will affect how the story ends.

Even with all these choices, Bioshock is not so open-ended that one gets lost.  The menu screen is easy to navigate, providing the player with detailed maps, brief and more specific summaries of the goals at hand, hints if needed, as well as mounds of information on the ammo and weapons picked up, the different kinds of plasmids, and records of all the radio messages picked up.

I really can’t say any more.  It is simply something that must be played, not read about.  If you enjoy dark stories, terrifying experiences that do more to intrigue than scare away, and rich, mysterious atmosphere, Bioshock is the game for you.  Go pick it up, would you kindly?

Home

So I am home from school now!  I find myself occupying my time with way more sleep than I need, embroidery, video games, and chatting on AIM.  Plus some animation.  I started an animation project, and it’s an ambitious one.  Ahaha.

My multiple Christmasses have started.  The collection of items from the first haul is remarkably bizarre and hilarious.  A Wii, a $50 gift card to Victoria Secret (I’m not sure what my dad was thinking, but at least I can get…PJs and lotion), and a bunch of World of Warcraft stuff because he and his girlfriend took her sons to BlizzCon in California recently.  Ahaha.  That stuff was actually kinda a joke gift, but at least the artwork is beautiful.  And it’s well-timed, since I may be applying there for an internship (Blizzard, I mean).

Anyway, I’m happy to be home.  I’m sure I’ll start missing being back at school even more than I am now in about a week or so, but it’s alright.  I get to see all my high school friends and family (and GRACE!), plus David and Finley are visiting in a few weeks.  So all is well.

Now, back to Xenosaga.  I curse David for ever making me want to completion beat this or ANY game.  And the other two games in the series.  This is going to take me FOREVER.

Review: Portal (Game)

Okay, this is new.  I feel like writing today (REALLY?), so I’m going to start this section of my blog.  Game/movie reviews!  When I feel really strongly about something, I am usually motivated enough to write stuff about it, haha.  So here goes nothing.

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Title: Portal (The Orange Box)

Platform: Xbox 360

Summary: Use a highly advanced portal gun to propel, throw, drop, and otherwise pass yourself through a barrage of Aperture Science Enrichment Activities while accompanied by the omniscent GLaDos, the loveable Weighted Companion Cube, and the sneaking suspicion that the cake is a lie.

My Opinion: Alright, I had been hearing about Portal for quite some time now.  For whatever reason, it seemed to have taken the world by storm.  I tried the flash game of it, but I was perplexed as to how everyone could be obsessed with a little 2D flash game where you created holes in walls and jumped through them.  This is probably because I figured the real game was identical to this Flash creation.  On top of that, everyone continuously babbled about some kind of “cake” and how it was a “lie”.  I heard the song from the end of the game, and, while it was delightful and quirky, I had no idea what any of it meant.  Who was this strange computer?  Why was this game so popular?  WAS the cake a lie?

Fortunately, I have a friend who offered to lend me any of his 360 games (as I only have Soul Calibur IV…and I only have one controller).  I saw The Orange Box and was like, “YES”.  Let’s figure out what the heck is going on here.  Boy, am I ever GLaD I did that (…God, that was AWFUL).

The game is some crazy combination of a puzzle game and a platformer.  You have to use all kinds of strategy to launch yourself onto distant platforms, drop weighted cubes onto little robots, avoid stepping in some kind of mysterious liquid in the bottom of a room, and redirect weird little explosive balls of light into the appropriate receptors.  And on top of that, while you accomplish all this, the bizarrely melodic and instructive voice of GLaDos follows you through each room with little pick-me-ups such as promises of a party and cake, or warnings that Aperture Science apologizes for having you go through a military gauntlet instead of a normal testing facility.  By the end, the delightful irony of the computer’s extremely calm and yet somewhat psychotic voice contrasting with her less-than-comforting words is enough to keep you entertained for the entire final level.  The final boss fight is the most wonderful battle I’ve ever encountered.  I’ve actually beaten it twice in order to enjoy the hilarious dialogue over and over again.

From an artistic standpoint, the game is beautiful.  The surfaces are brilliantly done, and while your character’s movements are strange when you catch sight of yourself in a portal, it really doesn’t detract from the rest of the game.  The contrast between the portals and the stark white interior of the levels is brilliant, and the little details of the game managed to keep me amazed throughout the whole game.  Some of my favorite things, however, are the hidden things.  Behind extended panels you can see broken equipment, horrific writing scratched into walls, chain link fences, scattered pieces of paper, and messages in suspicious red writing.  When you later escape INTO this world behind the scenes, the mechanics of the building are SO well done, and the little messages are everywhere, instructing you on where to go and generally unnerving the player.  It’s honestly one of the best games I’ve seen in this respect.  It manages to freak you out subtlely throughout the game, increasing in eerieness as you continue to play.

Lastly, when you beat the game you unlock advanced puzzles and challenges for the levels, extending gameplay past the basic 4-ish hours you’ll spend on the main game.  And they are legitimately difficult.  I beat one and was completely incapable of being the next one.  And the main game is pretty tricky as it is–I found myself stuck more than once, having to use the most creative of solutions to make it through the level.  The advanced levels are this and more.

Overall, I can strongly recommend Portal to those who enjoy artistic details, a bit of horror, delightful irony, and solving crazy puzzles.  The controls are accessible, so it shouldn’t be an issue to learn how to play.  I do, however, recommend that you play it when you are able to have the sound up, as a good portion of the novelty of this game is in the dialogue that follows you throughout the game.  It also helps you advance to the next levels.

Just remember, though: the cake is a lie.

Moving On

Now that that post is out of the way, I should say something about the happenings in my life as of late.  Admittedly, I have been motivated to keep this updated again due to Finley starting a blog (hi, Finley!).  But that’s neither here nor there, really.

Finals week is approaching fast (as I mentioned moments ago), which also means my first semester of college is nearing an end.  I feel I should reflect on this.

So far, I have learned a good deal of things.  More life lessons than anything.  For one, I need to put more effort into my art classes, specifically Drawing.  Never once did I expect to get a B in an art class, much less in my specialty.  Even though the class is easy for me, I have admittedly been slacking in class.  This must be resolved by next semester.  …Though I would really enjoy NOT having this teacher again.  Alas, I have no choice.  He is the only professor who does anything even remotely close to making maquettes, which is something I have been told I will need for my future career in the gaming industry and concept art.

Secondly, I have learned that drama isn’t worth the trouble.  It seems to me this lesson is taught to me each and every semester of each and every year of schooling in which I’ve participated, and yet I still can’t seem to get it mastered.  The beginning of this year was brutal.  Between rampant boy issues, Art History wiping the floor with me, feeling emo for ridiculous reasons, and getting sick to my stomach from either legitimately sincere heat issues or me being a psychopath, I was surprisingly beat down at the start of the semester.  Now that I’ve talked these things through with friends and family, and gotten over the boy, the emo, and the heat/psychosis, I’m feeling remarkably better.  In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that college is monumentally wonderful.  Why couldn’t I just do this at the BEGINNING of the year?  Why must drama follow me everywhere?  It doesn’t.  I just keep thinking, “Oh, drama’s a nice person, perhaps I was wrong about it.  Perhaps hanging out with it again will show me that drama and I are on good terms.”  NO.  Not good terms.  Remarkably bad ones.

Don’t get my earlier statement wrong, I’ve learned lots within the curriculum of my classes, too.  For instance, I know a lot more about graphic design and composition now.  I also understand Adobe Flash, which is much easier to use than I thought.  Time consuming, but my point is made.  I also understand communication on a much more stable level.  Granted, I found the points in the book that had virtually nothing to do with the main class points much more interesting than the actual…main class points.  However, at least I’m learning things I can apply to my future goals.

I’m not particularly looking forward to finals.  I wasn’t kidding when I rattled off that list of what I have to do next week.  In Humanities, I have to finish more than half of my expertise paper on Alchemy.  Do you comprehend how difficult it is to write a paper on Alchemy?  Alchemy isn’t even real.  They believed they could create gold, make a stone that would prevent aging or cure all diseases.  On top of that, it’s so difficult to understand what anyone is talking about when it comes to the topic.  I had to milk all I could out of Paracelsus’ theories because I could actually understand some of what he was saying.  Basically, for my last 8 pages, I’m going to have to talk about how Alchemy appears in popular culture today.  I know a surprising amount about this.  Between Fullmetal Alchemist, Harry Potter, and Xenosaga, I think I can manage to make 15 pages.

After that, I have a speech to write for Oral Comm.  I’m not terribly worried about this speech, it’s a persuasive speech on a topic about which I’m very passionate; why the stage version of Phantom of the Opera is better than the movie.  The problem is simply going to be sitting down and writing out the outline.  To add to that, I also have to finish my take-home final for that class.  Take-home final?  YES.  As much as I usually dislike that teacher, I love her for that.  There’s also a minor assignment I have to finish for Tuesday, which will be the first of these assignments that I will finish.

After that, I have my Flash animation for 2D.  This is just WORK.  It’s not difficult by any means, it’s just time consuming.  I have most of the backgrounds drawn, and I intend to work on the moveable images this evening.  Animation will be next week, and that will just take time.  Honestly, I find working in Flash rather fun, so I’m not worried.  I just have to DO it.

Lastly, over the next weekend, I have to study for my Art History final and my Humanities final.  Art History, though a rather difficult class, is really not worrying me that much.  After my calculations, I discovered I can get a 50% on the final and still have a relatively high A in the class.  On top of that, I have a friend who will be taking the final before me, so I can get the scoop on it beforehand.  And the professor is totally okay with this, that’s the best part.  Humanities is also not going to be awful.  A 40-ish point scantron?  Multiple choice and true/false?  God, I love J Rob.

The very last thing I would like to finish sometime this week or next (to quote GLaDos, “that was a joke, haha, fat chance”) is Christmas gifts.  I have to draw something for at least four people.  Dang.  Well, I suppose that’s really only three, as I showed David his unfinished picture.  I can’t actually finish it until I buy some new blue Prismacolors (stupid Wailord).  The other three…I had MEANT to color them, but it’s looking like I won’t be able to do so unless I finish lineart for Christmas and postpone actual giving until they’re colored.  Also, I NEED a picture of the trio of destruction before I can even START Finley’s.  So.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining.  I’m actually very happy!  Classes are going pretty well, I LOVE my social life, my art is at a very good point right now, I have beaten a new video game (woo!), all is right with the world.  :)

Oh, last thing.  I came up with a new story idea!  Actually, lots of story stuff has occured.  I actually went back to Miles 7 for a little bit.  I started fixing up issues with character appearances.  I recently went back and changed how Lakai, Tek, and yellow half-demons in general look, which means I had a lot of editing to do.  On top of that, I had to revisit the first chapter and make it less stupid.  Why in the world did I think it was a good idea to put in two full paragraphs describing Lakai’s CLOTHING?  No.  Especially not now that I’ve somewhat changed her clothing style.  And hair.  And eye color.  It’s much more well-written now.  I also had to make sure my terms were consistent, as well as my captialization.  Councilmen/councilman was my worst word inconsistency.  I think I was somewhat motivated to fix it up due to Finley starting to read it.  God, no one has read that story in forever.

Anyway, new story idea!  I saw Casino Royale, which kind of got me on a card suit kick.  I decided I was going to do some kind of story involving the suits.  I thought I would do a fantasy story, perhaps create four characters who represent each suit.  Then I got a much better idea.  The story features Sarah Morlen and Jim Veras, my Silent Hill (originally) characters whose interactions are actually REALLY well designed.  I decided I needed to use them in a story.  On top of that, I tied in Keia Samson and Jacob Thelm (who is basically a new character whose personality is basically the same as the made-up personality I used to give Reno in our FF7 fanstory).  I had originally planned to have them in the same universe as Sarah and Jim, so it worked out rather well.  The plot is a crazy combination of Casino Royale, Tomb Raider, and National Treasure.  I’ll be brief, but they each represent a card suit (Keia is Queen of Hearts, Jake is King of Diamonds, Sarah is Queen of Clubs, Jim is King of Spades) and they have personality flaws and bad luck based on their suits.  And there’s this crazy artifact that can only be accessed by these four people.  Aaaand there are evil people and good people who want to find it.  That’s the gist of it, and I think it’s gonna be a really good one.  It takes place in modern times, and it’s more gritty than my other two stories, I suppose.  I’m excited!

Well, that’s all for now.  I think I good, solid 1500+ words is fine for today.  I shall catch y’all on the flipside, as it were.

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