Whoo. So, as of yesterday, NaNoWriMo is over, for me. That, and the writing load at work’s getting quite a bit lighter – it’s hectic, sure, but there’s not nearly as much of it to do, so that’s a good thing.

Been playing a lot of the 360 lately – mostly Gears of War, but I’ve tried to go back and play some games that I’d put down, like Tomb Raider: Legend, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

TR:L is a good game. It’s one of those games that’s not made for next gen from the ground up, and it shows in some places. The main character’s model, for instance, is much higher poly than the supporting characters, which though sensible, is really quite odd looking in practice. Still, Crystal Dynamics really kicked some butt with this, and turned around a dead franchise. Kudos to Eidos for finally realizing that Core wasn’t up to the job. Some of the puzzles in the game can be kind of convoluted, but still, the exploration’s fun, and the story feels properly epic. I’ve heard it ends rather abruptly, but we’ll see – I’m currently about 70$ through the game and enjoying it quite a bit. My only real complaint so far? It’s very dark. I know that’s to make the light on Lara’s belt more important, but dag, yo, it’d be nice to see something every once in a while.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is fun stuff – basic beat-em-up nonsense, but with a good use of the Marvel license. They really scoured the map to get as many ties to the Marvel Universe as they could. The game’s fun – mindless fun, but well-executed. I was hoping there’d be more folks from TGF online with it, but Gears of War really dominated people’s Live time in the last month or so. The one thing that Marvel: Ultimate Alliance does show, though, is that for me, I’ve definitely outgrown 99% of comic books. Not that the *medium* has anything wrong with it – I still love me some Sandman, and Sin City – but there’s no denying, for me, that a lot of the stuff in the Marvel Universe just feels … dumb. And man, the spelling mistakes – in two spots, HYDRA was spelled HYRDA, and that’s not the first bunch of errors I’ve seen.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent has an even more egregious spelling error, which I’m just astonished made it through all their rounds of QA. One of the main, repeated text balloons, which talks about gaining and losing trust tells you you have to be somewhere by a certain time or you will “loose” trust. Augh! I wanted to pull my hair out. The rest of the game is beautiful, tense, and quite interesting. The more “open-world” design of the HQ missions, where you have a variety of tasks to accomplish and a preset amount of time to do them in, but the methods are entirely up to the player, are really fun. The problem for me, though, is that Splinter Cell has always been about trial and error. The HQ missions avoid this in large part, because they’re not totally linear. But the “standard” missions are chock-full of trial and error. I want to play it like a spy, where I don’t kill anyone, and I just sneak around, but to do so requires either moving *so* slowly, or basically knowing where everything is already. Which means massive amounts of trial and error. The set pieces are beautiful, the graphics are excellent, blah blah blah, but the single player’s difficulty is brutal.

Splinter Cell, to me, ever since Pandora Tomorrow, has been about the multiplayer. In DA, the multiplayer is quite different, and unfortunately, with Gears of War, there haven’t been enough people who have picked up DA to get serious multiplayer games going. But one of these days, I really want to give the new, pared-down multiplayer a shot. We’ll see.

Anyway. Other than that, not really a lot going on. I’ve gotta start getting to the pool again. We’d been really good in the first few months of the year, but the last few months, I’ve been lucky if I get my ass to the gym once every two weeks. NaNoWriMo has obviously been a huge part of that, in terms of never feeling like I had free time, and the other part has been the time change and the shorter days, but I’ve just gotta fight through the dark, and get up earlier, and get to the gym before work. Else, I’m just wasting money, getting fatter, and being a lazy buffoon.

When I was swimming three times a week, I was getting in noticably better shape. It wasn’t hard, I just had to do it. Now, it’s the same. I just have to get off my ass and do it.

Saw the new Bond movie tonight. I’d been excited about it ever since I saw Layer Cake, which also starred Daniel Craig. I’d figured so had the Bond folks, and that was one of the big reasons he’d been chosen. He’s not necessarily a good looking guy, but he has incredible presence, and can carry an air of menace that none of the previous Bonds have had, IMO.

The movie itself (spoiler-free) was incredible. Right from the outset, you know this is a different beast than the last Bonds. This was directed by the guy who did Goldeneye, which was the last half-decent Bond film. One of the biggest problems with Bond in recent years is that he’s invincible. Regardless of what situation he’s put in, you never really felt that he was in any danger. I can only fault Pierce Brosnan and the writers for this, as the *character* just never felt authentic, and the danger never felt real.

In this, the danger is real. The level of intensity has been cranked up a notch. This Bond is *serious*, and he’s *raw*. Finally, they’ve taken him from someone who was too cool to get dirty to someone who has a job to do, knows how to do it, and isn’t going to waste any time with glib nonsense.

When it’s supposed to be funny, it’s genuinely funny. When it’s supposed to be tense, it’s genuinely tense. You never get the sense that this Bond is a comic book character, or that he’s anything other than both real, and desperate.

It’s *perfect*.

I haven’t seen all the Bond movies, but to me, this is hands-down, without a doubt the best one I’ve seen by leaps and bounds.

So. The PS3 and Wii are coming out this week. I guess the PS3, technically, *is* out. Let’s see… they’re currently going for about $6K on eBay. WHoop-de-doo. You know, for the 360, I almost understood the mania. You had something like Project Gotham 3, which was staggeringly good looking compared to anything else on the market. It was, in many respects, something completely new – something you’d never seen on a console before.

And so while I think that it’s completely, totally inane, I get what drives someone to do something nutty like that. I also presume that these people are *bazillionaires*. But whatever. The PS3, on the other hand, is a completely lateral move from the 360 – the graphic *potential* of the system is maybe on par, if not slightly more powerful than the 360, but right now, it all looks quite a bit worse than anything on the MS box.

I *love* Insomniac’s games. I think they’re one of the best developers on the planet, without question. But Resistance is no Gears of War, and it’s the PS3’s standout hit by a wide margin. What else on the PS3 is worth getting? Genji? A low-framerate version of Call of Duty 3? No thanks. NBA07? Ick. How 989 could be such a shitty developer, and have such strong ties and access to Sony is totally beyond me. They’re just perenially inept, and it’s sad.

But so what do you get for your six thousand dollars? What is even on the *horizon* for the PS3 that you can’t get on the 360? Motorstorm? Metal Gear Solid 4, I suppose – but frankly, after MGS3, and convoluted *idiocy* of the plot of MGS2, that franchise means jack squat to me.

I know, I know – I’m not the mainstream.

But for the mainstream, what? What is there? Madden? Does the SIXAXIS functionality of Madden justify an extra two hundred dollars?

I just wonder. What are those people standing in line waiting for? And the only thing I can think of is eBay.

I, on the other hand, am finally thinking it’s time I got a 360. I’ve got plenty of games for it, I’m really excited about MS’s push towards downloadable HD content for it, and frankly, it’s proven its worth as an incredible piece of hardware, and as a well-designed gaming platform. Live is pure gold, whoever came up with the Achievements system at MS deserves a big-assed bonus. It’s incredibly compelling for no good reason, but there’s no two ways about it – I loves me some acheivements.

Oh! As a super-early Christmas present, Ei-Nyung got me Guitar Hero 2! It’s AWESOME. Sweet Child o’ Mine? Search and Destroy? Great stuff. Awesome song list. The only thing that sucks is that I really want to play it with my cousin, who really got into the first one when he was here for our wedding. Maybe we’ll have to fly him out for a week or something. 😀

Good stuff.

Work’s going pretty well – I’ve finished up the ridiculously strenuous segment of this game, which was writing certain characters from scratch. Now, I’m just editing text, and it’s both MUCH faster, and MUCH easier. Good times.

A great night, capped off by a great morning. Rumsfeld to quit. About time, you monkey-brained jackasses.

Also: Democrats won the house AND the senate. So long as the initial vote count puts D’s ahead, if we want to have any hope of “playing on a level field” when it comes to how this gets handled, it’s important, IMO, to *presume* that the vote count is correct, talk about it like it’s correct, act like it’s correct, and make it the mental default in the minds of Americans that Democrats won the Senate. No handwringing. No doubt about the outcome. No Republicans these days would EVER cast doubt on their own victory. If we want to have any hope of competing, in this case, we have to do the same.

So, yay for victory!

Not in any real sort of way, but November’s going to be inSANE. Work is incredibly intense right now, and with NaNoWriMo starting in 20 minutes, almost the entire month is going to be consumed by writing, or thinking about writing. Worse, I’ll be writing about someone who makes games, which means I’ll be writing about my job where I’m writing. Bleah!

I’m excited about it – It’s a little weird because I know that 50K words is definitely possible, and I don’t need to really keep the blistering pace I had last year. But I’m worried also that because I’ll be so busy, I’ll end up slacking and not finishing. I’m hoping that maybe I can do it, even if the only time I write is on the weekends. We’ll see, I suppose.

I have what I think might work as an introduction in my head, and a fistful of other “scenes,” but I don’t really know how it all ties together, which may be a problem in the long run. Last year, I started with a general plot outline, and some general character outlines. Most of those changed in the course of writing, but they were there to fall back on if necessary. This year, I’m flying almost totally blind. I do have the consolation that the main character is basically me, so, at least that’s taken care of. We’ll see.

Anyway – if I don’t see you this month, that’s why.