The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So we’re doing this thing on Talking Time called Listening Time, where we’re sending each other mix CDs… my week isn’t until December, but I kept thinking about it, so I thought I’d work on it… this is what I came up with so far. If you’re a random person from Talking Time who came here for some reason, you might not want to look at it because it might ruin the surprise… maybe. I dunno. Maybe you don’t know any of the songs…? Who knows.
Also, I need a name for this… if you can think of one, let me know.

1. Mono Puff – Creepy
2. The Boy Least Likely To – Fur Soft As Fur
3. The Life Aquatic Soundtrack – Ping Island/Lighting Strike Rescue Op
4. Mike Doughty – 27 Jennifers
5. David Sugar – Warm Analogue
6. My Robot Friend – Sex Machine
7. Guster – Barrel of a Gun
8. Goldfrapp – Number 1
9. Blue Man Group – I Feel Love (featuring Venus Hum)
10. Cake – Satan is my Motor
11. Jamiroquai – Black Devil Car
12. Ok Go – Invincible
13. Daikaiju – Showdown in Shinjuku
14. Persephone’s Bees – Nice Day
15. Soul Coughing – Screenwriter’s Blues
16. My Robot Friend – swallow

You can test it using the power of the internet, or ask me to share it with you… I need testing… I need this to be good… or good-ish… people on the boards are talking about mix CDs have flow and this and that and I dunno about any of that… so… gotta run through drafts, you understand.
Oh, also, this made me get a WMA to MP3 converter, which means I can now listen to The Boy Least Likely To in the car, which is a great bonus.

Okay, I have some things to talk about… one of them I’m debating writing for an essay for Deadpan… but I dunno how far it would go… then again he wants short essays… hm… I guess I’ll hold onto it awhile longer and see if I can write it up over the weekend or whatnot. I dunno what kind of thoughts about life I’d come up with about it, but it seems like there’s room for interestingness.

In any case, though, I wanted to talk about what I’ve been doing, which has mostly been a big bunch of nothing, but I did spend the 800 Microsoft Funbucks left on my gamertag to buy Eets: Chowdown. When it came out, I was interested, but I didn’t have any points and it wasn’t worth a trip out to buy a point card, so I never picked it up. (I wonder what will happen when I get around to the downloadable campaigns for Band of Bugs… they’re at a decent price, but downloading them will kill my 0 balance game on Microsoft points… I wonder what stupid crap I’ll buy then…) But during random bootings of Steam for the playing of Team Fortress 2, the little ad for the PC version kept tempting me, and I decided if I was going to buy it, I might as well get some achievement points out of it (since the price was the same) and so I downloaded the demo, tried it again to make sure my memory wasn’t wrong (it wasn’t) and bought it. (Although I look at the website now and apparently the PC version lets you make your own puzzles? But oh well, I honestly wouldn’t have used that much anyway. I doubt anyone else has the game for me to share stupid puzzles with.)
Anyway, the website is pretty clear on what it is. It’s sort of like Lemmings, in that you have this cute guy that you can’t directly control that you need to get to a goal. (in this game, it’s a puzzle piece.) You do this by using these little items you set up ahead of time (some are pre-set) to take out obstacles as well as affect the cute Eets guy’s mood to either Happy, Angry, or Scared. If Eets is scared, he won’t jump off of ledges, and will turn around when he encounters them. Happy Eets will jump when he gets to a ledge a short distance, but will turn around at any barriers. Angry Eets will jump much farther, and will bite and destroy certain barriers that get in his way. So you use that as well as an increasing number of little doodads that you can place on the maps… you have to activate most of them, though… it maps them to a button on the 360, so there’s an element of having to time everything instead of just setting it all up beforehand and letting it go. You get awards for using less tools than it gives you as well as running the levels below a par time. (depending on how you solve the levels, Eets could end up walking for a long while, leaving the running time from start to finish longer than the par… you have as much time as you’d like to set it up)
In any case, it’s a nice, relaxing little game. I enjoy it… I think I’m about a fourth to a third of the way through the puzzles, which is nice. It has a good number in there… and the achievements require you to play without requiring you to do stupid impossibly hard tasks, for the most part, which I appreciate. I like those sorts better. In any case, it’s probably worth your 10 dollars, if you’re into that kind of game play experience. It’s great to play while listening to podcasts…

In fact, I think I’ll get to that. My feet are still hurting like crazy from last night at work, I need to do some serious relaxing.

Been having depression fits again. Yaaaay! It really is related to how much I work… it can’t be coincidence that I’ve only worked two days over two weeks. But enough of that.

See, I can’t really play Phoenix Wright while I listen to podcasts, because I want to pay attention to what’s going on (although the Milkshake reference in the beginning of PW3 was uncalled for… if you’re going to make bad references in games, make bad video game references, dammit!) so I randomly started playing Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles on the PSP while listening to the new Retronauts and such… and man, it’s good. I never really played the old school Castlevanias… I mean, I’ve played Castlevania, sure… but I sucked at it and never got anywhere and never built any fond memories of it… Talking Time got me into the “Metroidvania” style of gameplay hard, and I caught up on what Symphony of the Night style Castlevanias I hadn’t played… the game is mostly a remake of Rondo of Blood, though, and that’s the last old school level based Castlevania… and it’s really damn good. Hard as shit, but really good. I’m dying a lot, but it lets me restart at the beginning of any level I’ve gotten to with full lives, and I’m playing with Maria (thanks, Jakanden, for telling me where she was) so that makes the game easier, (plus, I get to throw cats Student Witch Soul style) so I am making progress. The fact that I’ve only found one alternate route so far (The route into 3′, and only because someone told me how to get there, since the thing that unlocks Symphony is in that level) bodes well for how long the game will distract me… but who knows. I may hit a wall soon where I can’t beat any more levels and get distracted again.

In other news, what? Really? I would have thought Metaknight was enough… really? Well, okay… I guess HAL is making the game, after all They can put more of their characters in. No Lolo? He could… push… blocks? Turn people into eggs? Eggs are cool, right? Yoshi likes eggs and Yoshi is cool. Maybe.

Jonathan bought Clive Barker’s Jericho. I don’t especially know why he’s so damn excited about the game, but he was so much to rush out and buy it the moment it came out… I’ll probably give it a try later, since it’s here, but I think the darkness is going to get to me. Scare me in bright light, dammit… I’m tired of games and their “we have a great flashlight simulation” shenanigans.

I think I must be missing something in Half Life 2. Seriously. Because every time I complain about things that bother me in the game, someone tells me I’m completely fucking insane. And I just really don’t get it. I really don’t get how my complaints aren’t valid. What I’m talking about certainly ruined sections of the game for me as I yelled in frustration. Bleh.
(Note, I talk about the end of Ep 2 here, so there’s probably spoilers)
Anyway, I finished Half Life 2 Ep. 2 a moment ago. It was better, overall, than Ep. 1, very much so. I only got seriously frustrated at the end sequence, which, sort of ironically, was when the game tried to do something different… I appreciated the change in pace. I did not appreciate having to kill 2 Hunters around every Strider while giving me no ammo to do so. If I tried to not kill them, then I couldn’t throw the stupid bomb because they’d shoot it out of my hands. It was maddening. I ran out of everything but pistol ammo over and over, and it got to the point where if I missed with the first bomb, I’d just die and try again, as opposed to attempting another go. And then I turned it down to easy, and it affected almost nothing of what I was being frustrated by (which is why I never did it in episode 1 when Brer suggested it… Easy doesn’t change the environment, it just gives your guns more punch and you more life, and it was the environment that was making me angry) I ended up with barely enough ammo until the very end, so I guess it helped, but it still drove me mad every time I’d hit the striders and then the fucking sticky bomb would SLIDE OFF while I’m trying to pull out my pistol. Fuck.
The ending was completely idiotic as well. “Well, we best kill off a character.” Well, then do it while they’re doing something interesting instead of having a guy pop in a window and kill him. That’s just stupid. The battle had been over for a long while, and then, magically, these two things appear, break a window but nothing actually important in the room, and kill the guy. That is just a waste of killing a character. Completely. Yes, to make you really FEEL a character’s death, it shouldn’t be drawn out, it should just come out of nowhere… but making it come out of nowhere in a situation where there IS NO DANGER is retarded. The fact that these enemies just fly away afterward makes it even more random. Sure, you can start a battle with this random death, why not? But there is no battle. They just go “Oh, we killed one guy, see you later!” Bleh.

Anyway, that’s what I think of HL2 Ep.2, but apparently I’m insane and don’t know how to play video games, so you’ll probably adore it. I think Half Life does SO MANY things right that it makes me mad when it does things I perceive as wrong, more so than if some shitty game did it.

While I’m reviewing, I also beat Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
It’s Zelda. It’s very by the formula. It does a couple really neat things with the grappling hook, but otherwise it’s pretty well just as you expected. I’m satisfied, but more creativity like with the hook, and maybe two more dungeons with the new sword you get at the end of the game while giving this sword a power… that would have been appreciated as well. But if you like Zelda and you have a DS, there’s absolutely no reason not to pick this up… well, unless you’re under Zelda fatigue… like you just beat Twilight Princess or something. Then don’t.

Finally, Megaman ZX, you would be so amazingly perfect if you JUST HAD A FUCKING MAP! Every DS game has a map on the second screen! HAVE A MAP! HAVE! A! MAP! It’s still pretty good Metroidvania action, though… After dying on the first easy tutorial boss, though, I switched the game to easy mode. I still die, so that was probably the right choice.

And now, random links.

LINK GO! I don’t know what exactly is to be said about this, but I know the digg article link said it wrong.

LINK GO! To the delight of both Pikachu and the many children!

Anyway, so I was listening to last week’s Wingin’ It, and they were talking about the idea of your self being just this floaty thing and having different bodies and being something different every day. And I guess I’m weird, but that really doesn’t appeal to me. I’m a creature of habit who likes things to stay the same unless for a real good reason. Sure, being able to swap bodies might make bedroom antics more fun, and I’d be all for it, but in general I’d just want one body (not the one I have now) that was just how I liked, and that would be it. Having something I liked and being used to it being there is more worthwhile to me than making that choice of “who do I want to be?” every morning. I see the appeal, of course, but it’s not for me. I would get the side benefit of getting to choose the one body I got stuck with, though, so I’m all for this tech being magically developed magically, however.

LINK GO! Useful image for your forum shenanigans!

Note that this is written with love, because I continue to listen and am entertained.

Joe: Well, I got Game X that everyone is playing, got great reviews, and everyone loves.
Chris: It sounds like crap. Like crazy joke time. It’s not a realistic shooter. Who cares? I don’t care. I saw a trailer. It was all silly. Wacky fun time. Not interested.
Joe: Well, it’s not that bad. I can see why someone would like it… you know, for the kids… in the same way they like those… you know… kids toys. But it’s not really doing it for me.
Chris: I just really don’t get why they just can’t make good games! Just make good games. No more jumpin’ around, running around, good games. Go make good games. I remember when they made games that were good.
Joe: I don’t really know why I buy games anymore…
Chris: Me either. Me either.

They’ve spent the last two episodes talking about how they hate the gameplay of Team Fortress 2 based on Joe playing it from the Orange box, and now I just listened to Chris buying it on Steam, so the next podcast will be all about him hating on it. I just really don’t get it. I get they like their little genre of realistic military games, but that doesn’t make everything else bad. Just… different. I dunno, I enjoy their crazy opinions, but it’s just… reviews purely for them and for nobody else.
Honestly, listening to anyone who isn’t a hardcore gamer or part of the gaming press talk about games is really sort of surreal… like when Leo talks about this or that that he’s playing on his 360 on This Week in Tech… it’s just… odd. I know those sorts of people are the norm, as opposed to people like me who read gaming news blogs for fun… but it’s just interesting seeing that different point of view, I suppose, because it’s something I don’t have at all. I know everything about any game I’d want at least a month or two in advance, if not more… but there are people out there who just walk through the store and buy things for their PS2 or whatever just based on the title and some art… who don’t know the release dates of this or that game, or even if a sequel to a game they like is being made. It’s kinda weird and wrong that I can’t imagine me not knowing these things… I guess it really is just that much a part of my life…

Things What I’ve Been Doing Instead of Blogging

• Having possibly migraine-level headaches on a regular basis.
• Playing the games in Orange Box.
• Spending time with friends doing friend-like things.
• Working.

So, yeah. I guess that’s my excuses. I kept meaning to, but every time I sat down to write I had a headache and it was starting to come off very “god I feel so horrible god have pity on me” which I don’t want to come off as. So… yeah.

If you’ve been on the internet, though, you know Portal is fucking AMAZING. It’s short, but it’s one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in awhile. I felt completely immersed in the world, much more so than even, say, Half Life 2. (even though it admittedly employs many of the same strategies to do so and I appreciate them… I’m just often too busy being incredibly mad at design decisions to become fully engaged) The last time I felt like that was starting up Bioshock… and I don’t know of another game off the top of my head that made me feel like that… so… that’s awesome. Also, it’s hilarious, and the game play is solid. It’s just… great. If any of the other pieces of the Orange Box interest you, pick it up so you can play Portal. Seriously.

What else… Phantom Hourglass is still fine, though I’m only playing it while waiting for classes to start, so I haven’t been playing over the long weekend… it’s very… by the numbers? Though I appreciate some of the little tricks they do with both screens during the bosses. Anyway, hopefully I can finish it up before the new Phoenix Wright comes out… I have over a week, so I don’t doubt I’ll be able to, but we’ll see.

On an unrelated note, what the hell.

So, a lot of games i could talk about, but I think I’m going to talk about Team Fortress 2. Brer’s constant hinting and suggesting I not get it on the 360, combined with the 15 dollar price difference, made me get it on the PC… I prepurchased, and I could play Team Fortress 2 right now, so I have been. Short version: It’s pretty neat team mulitplayer action.
It runs well in a window, which is always a plus, though I should have expected it from Valve, who makes some of the more window-friendly games I’ve ever played. It’s really quite intense, and all the various classes do play differently, so I think they succeeded there. I’ve tried to give every class a fair shake (well, except Spy. I’m never sneaky. I’m never going to be effective as a Spy) and tried very hard to find someone to play that was not pure support. I don’t know why, I just felt like I’d rather be bad ass for once… however, it was not meant to be. I’m most effective as the Medic, which is what I would have guessed, and I make a decent Engineer and Heavy when the team I’m playing with needs someone to fill those spots… pretty well exactly what my niche was in Dystopia, only obviously a bit different… I keep wanting to be a Sniper, not because I’m any good at sniping, but because their secondary weapon is an SMG of sorts… I always tend to use guns like that, but there’s no class that uses that sort of weapon exclusively. (The Medic also has an SMG-like weapon in their Syringe Gun, but if you’re using that instead of your Medi-gun most of the time, you’re doing it wrong.) Granted, I think part of the reason is that those sorts of weapons take many shots to kill, of course, and if you attack someone like that you are almost definitely going to get a rocket to the head in this game. You need something to protect you if you’re using a weapon that needs multiple shots to kill, whether that be the Scout’s speed or the Heavy’s intense Hit-pointage…
Anyway, it’s a damn good game in that multiplayer shooter vein. It’s not going to dethrone Halo on the 360, but that’s a shame because it’s every bit as fun and a bit more varied, with all the classes and shite. Hopefully Brer and I will play it together more than a few times… though these last games I’ve played have been filled with lag, I don’t know if it’s my machine not being able to process the huge crazy-ass choke points I was involved in, or what… I don’t think that’s it, because I lowered the resolution of the game, and the lag didn’t go away… (note to self, kick that back up next time you play) Also, I don’t remember that lag playing on Brer’s friend’s server the night before… it might have just been the random server I was on. Oh well.

Before I move to Zelda, I do want to comment on the Valve Communities. It’s a neat little almost XBL overlay that goes over their games where you can chat and voice chat with people while you play. It’s a fairly great implementation… except for the fact that, if you start a voice chat with someone, you can only talk to them while the overlay is up. This is completely retarded. The moment I saw this, I was looking forward to just pulling in Brer, or all the Talking Tyrants, and just Voice-chatting with them while we play Team Fortress. Instead, now I still have to open up Skype for that functionality. Live lets you do that (and doesn’t make you take an hour to set up a simple game with two people… which is why I’d rather play online on Live in general and why I don’t mind playing a little for online. (it should be less than it is, but a little fee is okay) It’s click, send invite, they’re in, off you go. It’s so low-hassle… but I’ll never convince Brer or PC people of that, probably, so I’ll just move on) and it’s a godsend. I want to talk like idiots to my friends, but I don’t even want to hear random assholes. I might not be co-ordinating with my whole team, but co-ordination between friends still helps the whole team win (Playing 3 or 4 player online Halo proves this. Just Spaeth and Jonathan and I co-ordinating on the couch helps the team along quite a bit.) Anyway, I’m saddened I still have to have another program running to get this on the PC. You’re so close, Valve! Just let me like… click a check box to bring the chat out into the game or something!

I’ve also been meaning to give some impressions of Phantom Hourglass. It’s obviously scaled back a bit to be accessable to Nintendo’s new market… I could really see someone who plays Planet Puzzle League or Elite Beat Agents being able to grasp it, though it’s probably still a bit beyond the reach of the All Brain Training section of the demographic… however, it’s still a pretty good Zelda. By the numbers, but it has Wind Waker charm and cuteness to help it along.
The controls are pretty good, actually. An hour or so and you’ll not have to worry about them anymore… it actually gives the game a kinda lazy feeling… I’ve sat down with the game, playing with just one hand (you can use your other hand for some menu shortcuts, if you want, but it’s not required) and just chillin’ and playing Zelda. It’s nice, actually, and a bit different feel that I remember from Zelda (Note: The last Zelda I played was The Minnish Cap several years ago on GBA) The only control issue I have is that sometimes it’s hard to select your items quickly… clicking in the corner works, but not in high combat situations where you’d want to throw your boomerang a lot, and I feel like the R button quick selection works incorrectly, because when you release the button it cancels what you’re doing, instead of making it happen. I have to lift the stylus to throw the boomerang after drawing a path, for example, and it feels more natural to me to just let go of the R button… but these are minor complaints. It doesn’t ruin the game.
The bosses I’ve been pretty happy with so far too. Though I agree with Parish in saying that Nintendo can only make like 2 bosses, at least they’ve done some creative things with the two screens that made me smile. Not going to spoil anything, but they worked well and made the boss feel a little different, even if, perhaps, they actually weren’t.
As per usual, though, with games like this, I’m annoyed that I can play dress up but I have to unlock all the pieces in difficult fashion. I wanna make my boat look neat WITHOUT pointless sidequesting! But oh well.
Anyway, if you’re a gamer with a DS, you shouldn’t let the stylus controls disuade you. You’re still getting a solid Zelda. So, you know, go play and enjoy. And name your hero Fritzen. Because that’s what he should be named.

Before my morning of actually getting shite done, I’m going to talk about xXxholic Volume 10, which I read last night during break at work. I don’t know if anyone else who reads this blog likes xXxholic, but it will contain spoilers, so you probably should keep that in mind if you keep reading.

This volume was basically centered around the whole mystery of Himawari and what she is. There had always been hints of it, but back during the plot of the Spider’s curse, when Doumeki was searching for a way to save Watanuki’s eye in his shrine’s texts, and Himawari seems to release a bookworm that destroys the one book they need… since then, it’s hard not to wonder what she is. She’s obviously not a ghost, because Doumeki can see her for the entire series, but she’s definitely something supernatural. The supernatural really care about Watanuki, not to mention it’s been hinting that he has a destiny to play that entwines with the plot of Tsubasa pretty strongly… I had all kinds of theories about her being a spy for Fei Wong and so forth.
I didn’t end up getting anything like that, but what I got was completely fulfilling and engaging.
The first half of the book involves Watanuki helping out with getting well water that hasn’t touched any water from plumbing, which was located via a deal that Yuuko makes with a Neko-Musume. Yuuko needs a lot of big jars of this (who knows why, of course. One assumes for magical reasons, or for another deal she’s doing), so Watanuki and Doumeki go every day after school for a week or so to fetch more water. The main plot at this point is about a girl who stares at them as they get the water, but this ends up not to be the important part. On the last day, Watanuki and Himawari talk, and Himawari points out that Watanuki isn’t as energetic as before, and maybe he shouldn’t go and get the water today. Watanuki says he’s going anyway, of course… but then Himawari makes him pinky-swear that he’ll not over-exert himself. Seeing this happen hit me hard, because there had been entire story arcs before about the dangers of pinky-swearing and then breaking your promise. I envisioned Watanuki doing some sort of crazy chase or something to save someone in danger, and getting very fucked up, the moment I saw this…
What happens is a bit more subtle. They need to investigate inside the house to retrieve a cloth that Watanuki loses. Doumeki, who probably knows about the promise, tells Watanuki to stay outside, but he refuses, and a short adventure occurs. However, the moment he started drawing water, his pinky started hurting. We only learn this after the fact, though, when he relates the tale to Yuuko. She responds by pointing out that he lost the cloth right after his finger started to hurt.
The next scene is Watanuki using, by accident or on purpose, another of the dream balloons he bought from the dream vendor, and talking to Doumeki’s grandfather. He makes Watanuki confront the fact that Himawari seems to cause bad luck… Watanuki agrees that he now believes what Yuuko said, way back at the beginning… that there is no coincidences in this world: only Hitsuzen. Doumeki’s grandfather warns him to take his last dream balloon with him tomorrow. He does, but gives it to Kohane (during a nice meeting where he lists off a huge list of Yuuko’s faults… but ends with “I’m very glad I met her.”) on the way to school. This obviously worries Doumeki, who points out his grandfather didn’t tell him to give the balloon away… just to have it. Watanuki tries to tell him not to worry…

And then it happens. Himawari enters, has a conversation with Watanuki, gives him a gentle pat on the back… and Watanuki walks forward, stumbles and falls against a third story window, shattering it and falling three stories to the concrete below, covered in glass shards.

He’s saved by Yuuko’s intervention, as well as Doumeki’s grandfather, in a dream Yuuko conjures (one would assume that the dream balloon would have made a similar dream, if Watanuki had kept it)… this requires payment from three sources. Doumeki gives blood, as much blood as Watanuki lost… we see him bleeding outside of Watanuki’s room, trying to hold together. Himawari takes all of Watanuki’s scars from the accident… and the rest is paid by Syaoran… the real Syaoran. What he paid isn’t revealed… I suppose I should catch up on Tsubasa and maybe I’d know.
In any case, Himawari enters… Watanuki tells her that he’s realized she brings bad luck… and then, with the biggest smile on her face, she proceeds to tell him how she’s always been that way, and everyone besides her parents (and, apparently Doumeki, since his sacred bloodline protects him from most things like this… one would assume that blood transfusion might transfer that same protection to Watanuki, but it’s not revealed for sure yet.) that she gets close to gets killed, or has horrible accidents and bad luck. Just her expression during this whole speech and explanation is unsettling. She’s accepted this horrible thing she can do nothing about, and she refuses to let it break her, basically. It… it’s emotional but subtly. Then she says she was very happy to have spent time with him, and goes to leave his life forever…
To which Watanuki responds that he’ll be sure to cook up quite a meal for them once he gets better. Himawari says he’s a fool, and tells him he’ll probably die…
And then, bam, Watanuki says he doesn’t care, that meeting her was one of the best things to ever happen to him, and… BAM, that he loves her! Hit. Me. Hard. Granted, I have a lot of attachment to the characters, but man! That was quite the moment!

The volume ends with Yuuko telling Watanuki not to ask her to fix Himawari’s bad luck towards others, as the price would be all the happiness she would ever have. Watanuki show’s his character growth off by not immediately declaring to sacrifice everything to pay for Yuuko to do it… but instead to find ways to make Himawari happy despite her cursed nature… the final page has Yuuko telling Watanuki to rest, because he’ll need it… another bit of foreshadowing for the destiny that has been hinted at so many times before…

In any case, I don’t know if that walkthough of the plot was interesting, but this definitely fulfilled what I wanted out of chapters with such a foreshadowed reveal. Himawari’s condition wasn’t anything complex, but it was used the right way, and I loved every second of it.
Gods, I love xXxholic… I can’t wait until Volume 11…

Dammit, Nintendo, stop being such a cocktease. Either translate the fucking game or don’t.

So I’ve been in a Halo 3 haze, mostly… been playing it quite a lot, online and stuff. The Tyrants played on Sunday, and it was every bit as awesome as I thought it would be… we played Rocket Race (which we should try split-screen. It’d probably still be fun with two teams of two) and Infection and Pirate Ship… it was good times, yes indeed. There was only one moment worth capturing on video or whatnot, for me anyway, so I did, if you wanna look at my file share or something.
Anyway, it’s still pretty fun in it’s Halo 3 way, and I expect to enjoy playing multiplayer with the Talking Tyrants for some time to come.

Spaeth and I also went to the Lorwyn prerelease yesterday, and lost as per usual. My first impressions of the set are pretty positive. It was a lot of fun… besides the Planeswalker cards, which are unintuitive and basically bullshit. I really don’t know what they were thinking. Granted, I’m no tourney player, but I can’t see any serious deck not running Planeswalkers of their color(s). They’re just crazy powerful and can only easily be dealt with by spells that affect permanents (as opposed to spells that affect creatures, etc, which are more likely) like Boomerang or Desert Twister… I don’t know…
Oh, I wanted to pick up Dunwich Horror while I was at the game store, but they didn’t have it… so I ended up getting the Traders and Builders expansion for Carcassonne instead. I’ll let you know how that plays soon as I play it.

Plan for the rest of the week, in vagueries: Write Paper, Stick lots of little yellow stickers on things, play Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.