Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Some pictures of my gift this year; The newest addition to the family. Her name is Belle.








You can view the whole photo album here.

FedEx = Sucks

So, FedEx lost my Christmas present several days ago. (The guitar in the previous post) It was supposed to arrive on the 10th, but it seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.

After several dealings with the incompetent fools at FedEx, they now believe it was stolen; Possibly by one of their workers. Yeah...


*Update*

Well, they found it. Who knows where it went and what happened to it, but it has now been delivered. FedEx offered no explanation or restitution for their poor service, but at least I have it now. Everything is in perfect condition, luckily, and it is now safely wrapped and under the tree.

A Majik Christmas

Merry Christmas to me.

In a few days, I'll be the proud owner of a Parker Fly Deluxe in Majik Blue.

Expect several pictures when it arrives! Until then, the photo the retailer took will have to suffice.



This is actually the exact same guitar I played during my trip to Florida. Turns out the shop we stopped in at had an eBay store, so I ordered from there.

PoP Impressions

There's just something about Fridays that makes me want to blog....

Anyway, I got PoP the other day and have been playing around with it a bit. So far, one thing stands out above all the other things in the game; and that would be the graphics.

This game is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. I haven't played a game with this much art style since Okami, 2 years ago. Playing Prince of Persia is truly like a living painting. The transition from Corrupted lands to lush Healed lands is always an awe inspiring experience, that is very reminiscent of Okami. In fact, the more that I think about it, PoP is a lot like Okami in more then one way.

The game is not without it's flaws though. For starters, the combat. I, personally, hate the combat system. I find myself loathing each battle, and the cinematic direction they tried to take with it just isn't doing anything for me. It feels clumsy, weak and I just plain don't like it. Like most things in PoP, it looks good, but it just doesn't feel right. The Prince feels weak when in combat, and the fact that there is no health bar and you can't die just seems to add to the equation, even though you'd think that would be a good thing. Also, I find the whole "arena" system a bit annoying. For those that don't know; Basically there is a defined cell, or area in which combat can take place. There are invisible walls, and if you aren't fighting a boss and you reach these walls, you'll throw your enemy off the edge of whatever platform you were battling on. If you are fighting a boss, he/she will make some cheap move to escape certain death. (Usually in the form of teleporting behind you.) I guess I shouldn't call it cheap, since we're the ones cheating death throughout the whole game.

Having these defined and restricted combat zones is another flaw, in my opinion. I can see why, from a development standpoint, they exist. But from a player's view, they are just annoying and unnesecarry.

I haven't played a whole lot, so I'm not that deep into the story. But so far, it's just...meh. Nothing spectacular, but also nothing terrible either. A lot of people don't like the new prince, but I personally do. He is pretty funny and he has a lot of character. His background, so far, is totally unknown to me. All I know about him is that he was possibly a thief, but he prefers call himself an adventurer. "Stealing gold from the dead is a lot easier then taking it from the living." I'm eager to learn more about him, though. And I suppose that is a good thing.

Elika on the other hand....well...I don't love her and I don't hate her. I don't really feel like I need her, and I do find myself getting annoyed with her sometimes. Right now I'm at the begining of the game still, so I don't know a whole lot about her; Certainly more then the Prince. I'm hoping she will grow on me, but as I said, I kind of feel neutral about her right now. For example, I wouldn't care in the slightest if she were to fall down a pit and never come back due to misgauging a jump. Or perhaps "slipping" off the Prince's back while climbing some vines. I remember reading an interview with the producer of PoP, and he said something that I find myself repeating throughout my time playing. You may have read this before. He said,

"It doesn't really matter to us if you love her. It doesn't really matter to us if you like her. You just can't hate her. You can't hate her. The second you hate Elika, the second you're frustrated with Elika, the whole experience comes tumbling down."

This is an intersting quote, because sometimes I find myself saying "Oh, I'm not allowed to hate her." Even though I might be just a tad bit frustrated with her at the time. For the most part though, I don't mind her so much. I don't love her, that's for sure. I don't hate her either. I'm not sure if I even like her. But, like I said, I'm still early in the game, maybe my opinion will change the more I get to know her / the more time I spend with her.



So, there you have it. Those are my thoughts on PoP so far. I'll probably do a full review after I finish the game. One thing I forgot to mention though was the music. I'll keep it short and sweet: It's good. It's very "Sands of Time" feeling, which is definitely a good thing. PoP:SoT was my first and favorite PoP game, and it had suberb music. Even though the composer, Inon Zur, didn't do Sands of Time, he did do Warrior Within. He also did the music for Fallout 3, which is great. I guess I've been listening to a lot of Inon Zur lately.

Wrath of the Stuff.....King

Well, I picked up my Collector's Edition of WoTLK today....even though I have no plans of playing it any time soon. I'm still far too enthralled with Fallout 3.

Anyways, it's quite an impressive package. As usual, photos were taken. I was only really interested in the Art Book, Soundtrack and in-game pet, But the behind the scenes DVD could be pretty cool....if I ever get around to watching it.


















I also picked up Mirror's Edge yesterday. Also got my cool little messenger bag since I pre-ordered. Not a bad deal for $60...the game plus the bag. Plus it's cool that it's an exact replica of the one used in the game.





Speaking of pre-order bonuses, I also got these goodies with Fallout 3:

Oblivion, with Guns.

Fallout 3 = Superb.

I can't put it down!

I also picked up the Limited Edition Strategy Guide for it, which is something I never do for games. However, I feel a game of this scale warrants some sort of guide. Also, it has an extras section feature concept art from the game, so technically it is also an art book, which I do collect. It also has a massive fold out map, which is pretty cool. The whole package was a bit hefty, weighing in at $39.95, but you get what you pay for I suppose....That map is absolutely massive.


If you have any interest at all in free-roaming RPGs, or if you liked Oblivion or Morrowind even the slightest bit, do yourself a favor and pickup Fallout 3.

In other news, I've almost completed Fable 2, which is another great game but on a different scale then Fallout 3.

I haven't even played LittleBigPlanet yet....

Also got these....Pretty cool.



The Mirror's Edge demo launched the other day, and I played around with it a bit. Looks like it's going to turn out to be a great game.

New Print

I got another new print the other day. I've had my eye on this one for a while now.

It's called "The Mask of Hatred" and it was painted by the extremely talented Patipat Asavasena, aka asuka111.

24 Hours in a Day = Not Enough

Sometimes, 24 hours just doesn't seem like enough time....

Curse our human inefficiency! Sleep is obsolete!

Florida

A few weeks ago I went on a trip to Florida for about 6 days. The main purpose of the journey was to check out a college I'm interested in attending, Full Sail.

We stayed in this great 2 bedroom 2 bath condo that had a full kitchen and patio. It was located on this huge lot of land-about 6 acres, with a lake and pool house. Here are some pictures:

Outside of Condo

Kitchen

Entry Hall

Master Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Living Area


Dining Room

Pool House

Pool

View from the pool house roof

Here are some pictures of the aforementioned lake:

Yes, there was an alligator in the lake, but we didn't ever see him.

We also visited Universal Studios and The Hard Rock Cafe. Believe it or not, they had a great Van Halen display with Frankenstrat there!

The Hard Rock Cafe!

A Marylin Manson Painting

The Van Halen Display

Frankenstrat!

This statue was sitting outside of the Hard Rock Hotel, which is right by Universal Studios.

In downtown Orlando there was this very interesting building that was built upside down. It was a science / activity center for kids. We never went inside, but it was pretty cool from the outside. It even had this creaking noise playing, as if it were going to collapse at any minute.



We also took a trip to Cocoa Beach one day. It was about a 3 hour drive from where we were staying.

Yes, that's me.

We took a tour of the Full Sail campus, but there were no pictures allowed as there were classes going on. :( All in all it was a fun trip, and I'm looking forward to going back and attending school there.