thoughts on Flower.

the music in the game is better than this, if you ask me...

I've completed Flower, but I didn't play it all. Lindsay actually played the first 3 or four levels of the game, and had a great time. It's simple, intuitive, and gorgeous.

The first three levels are pure reward, with no videogame cliches like obstacles, time limits or score. You just play the wind and move through an environment. There's definitely progression, as you collect more petals and move onto new areas, but there's nothing stopping you from doing absolutely nothing at all, as well (in fact there's not one, but two trophies for doing just that.)

But there was a shift on the 4th level, where the tone changes, and with it comes consequence. All of a sudden, there are obstacles. There are "enemies" and there might be death (although I never experienced it, every time you get hit some petal burn and dissipate, so I imagine eventually you'd run out and be dead, but maybe not).

So while Lindsay had a wonderful time with the first 1/2 of the game, she immediately lost interest once they introduced the challenge. Not only did she lose interest, but she was mad at the game for not being what it led her to believe it was.

I didn't mind, and I think adding this thematic change gave the game a narrative drive and variation to make the overall game that much more impactful, but I can see exactly where she's coming from.

If Sony markets a game as a relaxing non-game, then it shouldn't turn into a something that is very clearly a traditional game. I think it's a great experience, and I like the depth and layers added by the game elements, but even I was surprised to find them there.

All that being said, I really like Flower. There's a lot internet hype and love for it, more than I might expect or give it credit for deserving, but it's definitely a cool game.


good times. good vibes.

Also of note: I'm at the Tea Garden and there's a DJ tonight. I'm positive he's playing the music from Toe Jam and Earl. Which is awesome.

Nerd Talk.

In the last couple weeks I've hit two extremes of the gaming landscape.

I picked up all of the following games; Street Fighter 4, Flower, Noby Noby Boy and Killzone 2. Amazingly all for the PS3, which is almost bizarre. I guess my poor 360 will get break for a while.

Street Fighter 4 and Killzone 2 represent games in the very traditional, hardcore sense of the word. Street Fighter 4 might claim to be casual friendly, but after playing just one or two online matches and I found it was quite the opposite. Killzone 2 is basically the definition of a hardcore FPS. It's dark, gritty and intense with complex multiplayer and a chaotic single player campaign. And slightly obtuse controls.

Noby Noby Boy and Flower, on the other hand, are on the far side of that spectrum. They are cute, light, simple, and almost non-games (although one more than the other...)

There's too much to write about in one post, so I'm going to break it down and write about each as I feel like it. Probably starting with Flower.

A flurry of a week.

There was a blizzard this week. That sucked. We're so busy at work that I didn't even really notice until I was almost snowed in.

I posted a couple of fun and cute things for the Super Awesome Art Challenge (well, Lindsay posted one, but I worked on it, too).

Lindsay and I had a Frog-Off and I posted some funny drawings on A Day in the Life as well. But if you read this blog, you should probably read those first. They're more interesting.

I had two meeting on different weekday nights and got two new freelance jobs. That's cool, one in particular is a client that might be interesting to work with going forward. I actually got offered one more, but I haven't decided to take it yet. I probably will do it, though, just to help a friend out, really.

Friday I went out at lunch at picked up Killzone 2 and Retro Game Challenge. I've been looking for RGC for a coupel weeks now, and I was about to give up and buy it online. Luckily I got the satisfaction of buying it in person.

That night Chris C, Ryan and I all met at Yum. We ate some awesome food and talked about our feelings. Ryan had to take off, but Chris C and I were chomping at the bit to get home and play some Killzone 2. Lindsay didn't think that was the best idea, so we compromised and went to the mall for a while, first.

And it was fun, amazingly enough. Lindsay was looking for new shoes. I'm not looking for anything. But there's no better place to do a little people watching than the Mall of America.

Finally, we went home and busted out Killzone 2. And it's pretty great. I'll write more on it later, but so far I really like the way the multiplayer works. It's a pretty original idea that keeps thing interesting. We played it until we wee hours of the morning, until my eyes hurt. Which wasn't hard, I was so tired.

Today we went to see our accountant and get our taxes done. An experience that really makes me feel like I'm an irresponsible idiot. Who knew you had to keep track of how much you pay quarterly (which I have to do because I'm freelance)? Go figure! There are so many questions I just don't have the answer for, but that's why we have help.

Our accountant specializes in artist, and he's amazing. He's worth every penny, it's great. We may have to pay him to do it, but he saves us more money than we could have ever hoped, and he even got my motivated enough to start a SEP IRA last year. Don't ask me what that means, but I have one, and I've contributed to it, too!

Tonight we're hanging at the Tea Garden working and writing long-winded blogs...

Jerks onlines ruin my mood.

We've been preparing for a big meeting at work, and one of the three people responsible is on vacation, so I sort of had my hands full all week.

But, at long last, Street Fighter 4 came out and I picked it up on Wednesday. As everyone knows, I LOVE me some Street Fighter, and I've been waiting for this game for a long time. Now I have played the crap out of it and I am (predictably) totally in love with it. It is amazing. Absolutely tremendous.



Well, maybe the choice in music could have used some work...

On Thursday, I took Oliva in super early to get spayed. The poor baby. I was afraid she'd be mad for me taking her, but when we picked her up she was super affectionate. And she continued to be so all night. I didn't get any sleep, because she had to stay away from the other pets, so she was quarantined to our room.

On Friday I was totally wiped. But after work Lindsay had a friend coming into town. So we arranged a Street Fighter 4 party and had to clean like crazy before everyone arrived.

It was awesome, though. Street Fighter 4 is excellent, of course, but it's also friendly to veterans and non-gamers alike, so everyone got a chance to play (and win, I think) a round or two.

But by the end of the night, I was really, really tied.

Saturday we took some friends out to eat and run some errands. I wasn't feeling too well, and Lindsay when Lindsay went out with her friend that night, I just stayed back and played some games.

I hoped into a game of Call of Duty 4 with a few friends. Those couple friends brought a couple more, and before we knew it we had a party of 8. So we decided to play Versus Mode in Left 4 Dead, since we had enough to occupy an entire game. Awesome right?

Unfortunately, one of these friends of a friend was not so cool. And he really, really got to me. It was like he was just reinforcing everything I hated about the average hardcore jerkoff on Xbox LIVE.

The whole thing was my idea, and I actually felt bad for inviting all these people together to have to play with this dude. He ruined the game for me, no joke.

But maybe it was just me who was bothered. After we finished one campaign, I quit out, but others kept playing. So obviously they we're as annoyed as I was with him...

So that sucked. Today was kind of productive. I worked out, finally went grocery shopping and Lindsay and I worked at a coffee house for hours. That was cool.

We came home and made a nice diner with our newly bought groceries and watched Monster Camp, a movie about LARPers.



It was alright. It was funny and some of the people were memorable, but overall I don't think it was as insightful or poignant as I had hoped.

I should get to bed early tonight, this next week might rough. I have a couple presentations early in the week, and a meeting for a new freelance project Wednesday night.

I should also remember to not let the house go back into a super-messy state...

My nightmare, I present to you...

Another video.

that's the way to live.

Man, screw this art BS. I've got to get into weight lifting...

Far Cry 2 is very good.

Tonight I beat the story mode in Far Cry 2. I am surprised at the transition Far Cry 2 made during my time with it. It started out solid but frustratingly quirky and slowly grew on me. Although right now I don't have much hindsight, I can pretty confidently saw it's one of my favorite games... ever.



The game really won me over thanks to it's perfect sense of place, gorgeous environments, commitment to immersion and perspective, breathtaking day/night and weather cycles, completely open approach to satisfying combat, amazing sound design and open world environment that seemed like every inch of it's huge map had a ton of time and love poured into it.

In a way, traversing the landscape and seeing things that were there for no other reason than to be found remind me of what I loved about Shadow of the Colossus.

And the open-ended approach every time I encountered an enemy, whether I pull right up in my turret-mounted jeep, crawl through the grass with a silenced sniper rifle, plant a land mine and wait for the enemy to come to me, or just blast some fools with a shotgun, I always felt like every environment was organic and allowed for a lot of play. I can't even think of a game off the top of my head that's really done this in the way Far Cry 2 has. I guess I was thinking Fallout 3, GTA, Saint's Row, Oblivion or some other open world game, but I don't think any of them have.

Maybe S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Crysis do, from what I hear.

Anyway, much like Fable 2, while I loved it I can appreciate how someone could see the faults as more glaring. Or how they could even hate it.

But I really did come to love it, and I'm sad to see it end. I might go back and do some side things that I missed out on, but I also might just leave it on a high note.

Plus, with Street Fighter 4 coming out this week, Killzone 2 the next, and Resident Evil 5 soon after that, I probably won't find the time...

Big Shots.

Yesterday I was thinking about Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf's one and only album, Big Shots. I've been on the verge of buying it for years, but it's kind of hard to find and pretty expensive (by CD standards).

I checked iTunes and they had it.But not in the iTunes Plus format, which means it's crawling with DRM. Knowing all Amazon's music is DRM free, I checked over there, just to see.

Lo and behold, not only do they have it, but they have it for less than the DRM protected iTunes version. Needless to say, I was instantly sold.

On a whim, I started clicking around to see what else Amazon had in their MP3 store that might be cheaper than iTunes or retail. And instantly I found they had the new Lily Allen album for 4 bucks. I was just talking to Lindsay earlier that day about it, and we didn't know if either of us were going to bother picking it up. But for 4 bucks, I'd be losing money NOT to buy it.

Right?

sexy camera time.

EDIT: I wrote this post before my new camera was charged. Since then, I've been running around the house shooting nothing like an idiot. I've went back and included a couple of the photos here. So far, I haven't played around too much with the camera, and I'm not even going to bother with post editing right now... So they are rough, rugged and raw (you can find slightly larger versions posted on flickr if you click the pictures). But so far I'm loving it.


Poor ol' Andy is sooooo old.
This past week was kind of busy and lame. I had to work after work a few times, I was sick, and I didn't get much sleep.

By Friday I was dead tired. I couldn't wait to get out of work to go sleep, but then Lindsay's parents came to town unexpectedly. I met them in Uptown, and we got some food and sat around talking for a good long while.

But I think my food disagreed with me, and I got pretty sick. I went home and played Far Cry 2 and felt sorry for myself. I'm pretty sure it was the food, because it went away in a few hours.

Saturday was Valentine's day. Lindsay had to meet a client in the morning, but we went out and had a fancy time last night. We saw Slumdog Millionaire, which was good. I knew absolutely nothing about it, other than what I heard on an NPR interview with the composer, and Kevin Smith's latest podcast, where they mentioned it in passing. I'd never seen a trailer or even got a good sense of what it was about. All I knew was India + Music. In my head that meant Bollywood craziness, which this was not. But like I said, it was good.

Today we met with Lindsay parents at Baker's Square and stayed for 3 hours. Then we went to the Mall of America, which was absolutely packed. It sucked. But they have the only Best Buy in the cities with what I needed: the Nikon D60.


Me. Fresh haircut, cleanly shaven. Take it all in, it's a rare sight.

I finally bought the D-SLR camera I've been looking at for years. I went back and forth between a lot of cameras until I decided upon the D60, which was one of the first ones I was interested in, anyway. Plus, I found a huge sale, so it was substantially cheaper than normal (the sale actually ended Saturday, but I bought it online, with in-store pick-up, because I couldn't make it in time to get the deal otherwise).

I just got home and I'm charging the battery now, so I haven't had a chance to mess around with it, but I'm excited. We have a lot of photography of product we need to do for the Paper Bicycle website (and my own, if I decide to put my product design stuff on there) so we're going to work out a good way to shoot all that stuff. That, combined with the upcoming wedding made it seem like a good time to finally get the camera. I kind of wish I got it back when we were doing Drawl Graphic product, but whatever.

Lindsay also bought an entire new set of dishes. We are going to get rid of any other dishes, and make things simpler. So spendy day at the stupid mall.

Lindsay went to the Tea Garden with Chris C to work, but I stayed back to play with my camera, do laundry, do some drawings, clean and maybe work out.

I will do one, or all, of those things...


Oliva will force me too.

Take me down...

I feel really strange today. I got a whole lot done at work, but I didn't feel so hot after work so I skipped the gym. I did some stuff around the house, and then played Burnout Paradise for a long time. I finally got my "A" license.

If you follow games at all, you know Criterion, the company behind Burnout, has been updating that game like no other. There's always new, free content continually rolling out. It's been a while since I played, but a friend bought it recently which inspired me to throw it in last night.

That game is awesome, even more so than I remember it being. I know they've tweaked a lot; the User Interface, to more events and easier to identify goals, a day night cycle, motorcycles, even slightly tighter graphics (they were already phenomenal).

But there's one thing that I wonder if they fixed... it's subtle, and I can't tell if it's just me. The problem I used to have with the game is that the camera was slightly too low. Anyone can tell you a low placed camera, in film, video games, or anything visual, will create drama and also a sense speed (if moving). Since Burnout was all about speed, I understand why they did it.

But it was too low. It made seeing what's coming really difficult. And I think they moved the camera up a bit. Like I said, I'm not sure, but I seem to have a lot easier getting around and seeing where I'm headed.

All in all, Burnout Paradise rocks hard. Now that there's so much stuff to get for free, and it's only 20 bucks, I can't see any reason to to buy it.

After playing for a while I started working out a bit, but I feel too weird so I quit after about 1/2 my routine. I don't feel painfully sick, but I feel... not right.

If that makes any sense at all.

Ain't no party like a nerd party.

Yesterday Lindsay and I went to Yum! and set up shop. We got some awesome food and sat there for hours working on stuff. I did a little drawing and billing.

We had to be at Chris S' place at 7, but at 6 or so Lindsay was kind of in a bad mood, so I suggested we play World of Warcraft for a minute. We did one quest. Which, of course, made us slightly late.

Chris S was having an "old school" video game party. We broke out the Dreamcast and played Powerstone 2, Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and some giant robot game. We also played the original Halo and Castle Crashers. Basically, anything that was 4 players.

When we left, I think everyone agreed to go home and play Left 4 Dead. I wasn't sure I was going to play, and when I got home, I didn't have to make the choice because there was already 4 of them in a group playing.

Far Cry 2 tricked me.

I left work at about 5:10 last night. I think I was the second to last person to leave.

I went straight to the gym, and there were a lot of people there. It was crappy, but I got over it.

Chris C, Adam, Lindsay and I went out to the Old Spaghetti Factory. I'm not sure how we picked that, besides many of our main choices were either closing soon or booked solid. The food wasn't awesome, but it wasn't bad either, and it was a good time.

After that we all came back to our place. Adam didn't stay too long, and Chris C just talked to us while I played some games. I tried out the Halo Wars demo. It was an RTS, for sure.

I spent chunk of time playing Far Cry 2. I got to the second act, and I was shocked. Amazingly, the intimidatingly huge world of Far Cry 2's African microcosm, that I've already spent tens of hours in and felt like I was finally coming to grips with the topography, was only one half of the full world. I just unlocked the Southern Territory.

Why didn't I hear about this? How could it have slipped past me. So I said Far Cry 2's world was huge before. But now I have to take that back and say it is monsterous. Holy crap.

Fratellis Time.

I just saw a news post on 1up that a 3-pack of the Fratellis songs are coming to Rock Band next week.

Awesome. Ever since Rock Band came out, I've been saying that these songs are some of my most wanted for the game. They are impossible not to sing along to, and will be a great party set. I wish Stacie Anne was included, but beggers can't be choosers.

Big (name) Games.

Last night Lindsay and I went to get some pizza, which is kind of strange because neither of us (despite out love of the TMNT) are really that into pizza.

She picked one that I was a bit skeptical of. It had feta, spinach, chicken and a bunch of other stuff. I like all of those things, but for some reason I just remember a similar pizza being terrible.

And I was right. I took one bite, put the piece down and said "it's all yours." Lindsay slowly chewed, swallowed, and asked if we should send it back because she hated it too.

So we did, which is rare for us. But we were very nice about it, and left a huge tip. Lindsay felt like our waitress hated us. Although I have worked in food services, and knew as long as you're not a dick about it, no one takes it personally.

Chris C met us at our place afterward. I had downloaded the Killzone 2 demo. Right now, it is exclusive to people who pre-order, which is mighty lame. But I was going to buy it anyway and I wanted to get a sneak peek.

We each played through the short demo. It was good. The controls felt fine to me, I got used to them fast despite having read some people negative reactions to the contrary. They're not super traditional, but I think they might be similar to Socom, so I wasn't too out of place. The action felt good and heavy, which I like, with enough accuracy and oomph in the weapons to feel satisfying, but enough enemies and general chaos in the environment that you still feel vulnerable. And it looked good. Technically it looked pretty great, but the art direction in the demo was bland enough that overall it didn't blow my mind. I'm pretty sure things get more creative once you get into the game.

Then we played the Resident Evil 5 demo with the split-screen co-op. I've played the demo a couple of times and thought it was fine. I wasn't able to get the online co-op to work, for some reason, so I had played it solo. Playing it co-op made it a lot more fun.

When a friend takes over the second character, Shiva, you become much more aware of their wants and needs. When I played alone I used Shiva as a pack mule, forcing her to give me her weapon when my ammo was out or to heal me with her last heath pack. When it's your friend as Shiva, they have the option to say "no" to my needy requests. And they usually do.

Not only that, but you also are much more aware of what your co-op buddy is doing at all times. We ended up using a lot of on-the-fly co-op tactics, like me guarding Chris C with the shotgun while he sniped enemies at a distance.

I was excited before, but now I can't wait for Resident Evil 5.

One more time?

Last night I ended up working until about 10:00. I got home, played about 15 minutes of Far Cry 2 in between scanning stuff for work. Lindsay came home and wanted to play WoW for a bit. By the time we logged out and I was ready to hit the hay, it was 2 am.

I have a feeling today might be very similar. I know I'm going to be working late, and there's nothing I can do about that, other than to work fast and hope it doesn't happen tomorrow. Which it might.

I did run out at lunch to pick up the new P.O.S. album. And I couldn't, because they didn't have it. Which made me kind of cranky.

Two big games.

This weekend hasn't been very productive. I was on a weird sleep schedule from working so late a couple of nights this week, so I made up for some of that missing sleep. I tried to clean the house a little, but only put a tiny dent in a huge beast of a mess.

On Friday Capcom's official blog picked me for a fan art contest they were running, which was really cool. I posted about it on Die Everyday if you need more information. It's pretty fun, though. I've got a lot of nice comments from people over there, and Capcom is sending me some swag. I've got my eye on an advance copy of Street Fighter 4 or a Mega Man 9 press kit, but I'm realistically expecting something like a poster or t-shirt.

I played a couple of very time-consuming videogames this weekend. Namely, Far Cry 2 and World Of Warcraft. I finally got a chance to really sink my teeth into Far Cry 2 this past week. It arrived the day before I left for Hawaii, and I managed to play for an hour or so before we left. But when I returned I got pretty invested into Fable 2 again so Far Cry 2 remained virtually untouched.

So I'm finally back to give it a far shake. I keep ending up playing it until the wee hours of the morning every night and I am loving it.

My first impressions were that Far Cry 2 was an amazing looking game, but it is also confusing, sprawling, frustrating, difficult and slow paced. And, in a way, I think those are all accurate descriptions. But you could also describe it in slightly different terminology as as deep, complex, fresh, challenging and methodical.

Once I got used to the pace and navigating the landscape it turned out to be exactly the game I hoped it would be.

It's a totally immersive first-person shooter in a completely wide-open microcosm of Africa. I love games that encourage you to tackle a situation any way you see fit, and Far Cry 2 is very flexible.

I can see how it would be frustrating to anyone used to something like Call Of Duty, which it linear and scripted and holds your hand every step of they way, telling you "Now it's time to go nuts with a machine gun over here" and "Now it's time to use the sniper rifle up here" and "Now it's time to be stealthy over there."

Far Cry 2 puts you in a huge world and says "do it whatever way you want, and don't expect help" which is liberating and awesome, but also means that sometimes you'll fail. Or at least have a difficult go at a mission. But I'm all about that game right now.

On Saterday Lindsay got the itch to play World of Warcraft, so we dove back in for a couple days. I went from level 32 to 35 in two or three chunks of playing, so it was pretty productive.

As we started playing, Lindsay mentioned she'd like to be in a guild. I was skeptical, but if we found a guild that was totally relaxed, I'd be down. Within an hour of playing, someone came up and asked if we'd like to join a guild. I asked a few questions to make sure there was nothing expected of us, and he said it was just for fun. So we joined. And it's been fine. There's always a couple people on, and sometimes they're running dungeons or questing and they'll invite anyone who's in the area, but it's no big deal if you say no. So far, so good.

Who knows, though. It's possible we'll log on after our next two months of inactivity and see we've be kicked from the guild. Wouldn't be the first time.