A couple smaller games.

Some thoughts on a few of the smaller games I've been playing lately:

ArtStyle: BOXLIFE - I'm now in the habit of buying any ArtStyle game that gets released, without question. They're always cheap. They're always stylish. And they always offer a new and creative type of gameplay. And even if it's not great, it's pretty darn good. ArtStyle: BOXLIFE is no different, and it happens to be pretty great. I could try to describe it, but it's hard to explain. So watch this and you'll understand everything about it...



There's two modes, R&D and Factory. I am doing fine at R&D, but I can't seem to make any progress in Factory. But I've only given that a try a couple of times. So it's kind of hard, but it's fun regardless.

Mighty Flip Champs! - A second game that's deceptively difficult to explain but simple in it's premise. it's puzzle platformer where you can only move side to side, you can't jump, and you must navigate the puzzles by switching out the game's backgrounds...

Um. Just watch...

More Mighty Flip Champs News & Previews

Ha. The funny part is I didn't realize you could set way-point markers until just now, when I found this video...

Like BOXLIFE, it gets difficult but the game is always pretty fun. I tend to run in a lot of circles on the harder levels, though. Also, I have no idea if it's tied to some licensed property, but it sure does seem like it is. Might Flip Champs! is filled with bizarre characters presented in a way that suggests some over-arching narrative I should know, but there is no explanation or context what-so-ever. Hmmm.

Sam & Max: Save the World - This weekend I finished the first of the six episodes, and I really enjoyed it. At three hours an episode (give or take), it seems like the developer Telltale Games has found a very appropriate length for an Adventure game.

The pace really kept moving, and although there were some head-scratching moments, I never got stuck enough to have to look at a FAQ. Which is a refreshing change of pace for Adventure games in general. And at three hours, I never fogot what I was doing, and the story didn't feel artificially inflated to pad playtime.

I'm glad the entire first Season was released on Xbox Live Arcade as one chunk, though. I don't think a single Episode would have been enough to satiate me, and I'm looking forward to playing the rest. At the same time, I'm relieved to know that even if I do tire of the game I can take a break without the fear of returning to the middle of a game and struggling to remember what happened already, where to go, and what I was supposed to be doing. Super nice.

Magic: The Gathering - Planeswalker - I'm enjoying learning this game, and I'm getting familiar with some of the subtleties.

I still constantly get my ass handed to me by the computer and haven't dared to try it online.

I do get the feeling sometimes that the computer always has exactly what it needs to crush me, while I get stuck with the exact wrong cards all the time. I think that perceived bias is just the way these types of games go, though. It's hard to not assume shenanigans when you know the computer can technically know/change the outcome of the draw. I'm sure it doesn't, but it's easy to blame in the wake of a devastating loss...

Oops, we did it again.

Friday I met Lindsay at the studio and we played World of Warcraft. Exciting. We eventually packed up and headed home. And played a little more WoW. We finally both hit level 50...

On Saturday we took a trip to the Animal Humane Society. I made Lindsay promise to not fall in love with any cats but she did anyway. But we didn't get anything. We went to Urban Bean and worked on stuff for a good long time. I made this for the Super Awesome Art Challenge. We were there until pretty late, so I made reservations for a late dinner at Chino Latino, and we went straight there from the coffee house. And it was awesome.

Today we went back to the Animal Humane Society. Lindsay had slept on it, and decided she loved that cat too much to not get it. She also talked our friend Andres into getting a cat, too. They're doing a buy-one-get-one special on cats for the summer, which sounds crass, but it's more to raise awareness of the huge influx of cats every summer that they just can't handle.

So we left with a new cat, but we were late to meet up for a very late lunch with Chris C, his new girlfriend and her baby. So it turned into Chris C, his new girlfriend, her baby, Lindsay, myself and a cat at Burger Jones, which is incidentally owned by the same people who own Chino Latino. It was ok. Since neither Lindsay or I eat red meat, burger places aren't usually our thing, and there was about 1 or 2 things we could eat.

We got home and got the new cat, Jade, settled in. She was abandoned in an apartment, pregnant and alone. Eventually the landlord suspected something (not getting a rent check or two, I'm guessing) and checked only to find a very skinny cat with kittens.

Jade was the name given to her by the Humane Society, and we fully intented to change it, but we couldn't decide on anything. In the meantime, we just called her Jade, and in no time it was official. It just fit more and more.

She's the most calm, relaxed and loving cat I've ever seen. You can hold her upside-down and pass her back and forth, and she doesn't squirm or even try to right herself. We moved her from her cage in the humane society to a holding cage, to the car, to the restaurant, to our house and she was never nervous, or wound up, or anything other than absolutely chill.

So without further ado, here's some pictures.


siamese mix.


very, very small.


very, very loving.


very, very sedate.

Nerd Level-Cap achieved.

There was a big presentation Tuesday, so Monday was spent rushing around a lot. The presentation was an Art Review of about 70 SKU's, and there wasn't a question or problem on any of them. That's what I like to hear.

My Xbox was delivered sometime on Tuesday, so took a little more than a week. Not bad. I've been so into WoW lately, though, that I was most excited to have my Streaming Netflix back.

Chris C stopped by to hang out, and soon after Ryan called wanting to play Rock Band. By that point, it was already getting late, but we did anyway. Probably a bad idea. Today I was soooo tired I couldn't stand it.

OMG. I came straight home and crashed for an hour just to be functional. Lindsay was at class, so I decided to go through a ton of demos I had sitting around. Simultaneously, I also "drove" both of our character in WoW to a new Zone, so we would be set to go the next time Lindsay wanted to play.

The demo's were just random Xbox Live Arcade games, Community Games (or are they Indie Games now?) and regular demos that had just piled up for a while. I was relieved to not like most of them, except two...

I tried out Sam and Max Save the World and knew I had to get it right away. I was a big fan of Sam and Max Hit the Road, an old PC point-and-click adventure, so the nostalgia alone kicked in right away...


Hit the Road

I wish the new Sam and Max was 2-D, hand drawn animation, but considering it's an Episodic series, I can totally understand how 3-D would speed up production a whole lot. I played Save the World for a bit, and I like it.

I also played the Xbox Live Arcade Magic the Gathering game. I've never played Magic, or had that much interest in getting into it. But I do like the card / board game renaissance that's been happening on Xbox Live Arcade with Carcassonne, Catan, Ticket to Ride, Uno, etc, so I figured I'd give this a shot. And I think I like it.

I didn't commit to buying it, but it seemed fun. Having the game do the work of setting up/scorekeeping/rule judging makes these types of games alot of appealing. Plus I don't need to have a second/third/fourth person around to play. It's pretty simple and seems like it could be a lot of fun. If I have some friends online playing it, I might consider it.

At one point, I noticed it was hard to concentrate on Magic the Gathering because while I was trying to pay attention to the tutorial, I was still playing WoW with my other hand. I realized right then and there that I was in a nerdy upper-echelon of the geek-universe.

Level This.

This weekend was spent staying cool and playing a lot of World of Warcraft. With my Xbox broken, I realize how even my PS3 and Wii combined are no replacement. So it was a good time to level up a bit.

On Friday there was a massive giveaway at work. We're preparing to move, so a lot of the product was given away. I grabbed a ton of stuff Lindsay and I worked on. Like a car-loads worth. Frontseat, backseat and trunk. After work I brought them straight to the Studio, and we unloaded them there. So the Paper Bicycle studio is now like a showroom of product.

Take a look.

Adam came by while we were doing that, and we walked to Uptown for a bit, picking up presents for some people's birthdays. It started to look pretty cloudy and ominous outside, so we ran back to the studio and drove home. Only to go back out and meet up at Pizza Luce. And it was awesome.

Saturday we signed our refinancing papers. Our mortgage payment is way lower now, and that's pretty sweet. It was really hot out, so we spent the afternoon inside playing WoW, making some crazy progress. Ever since we left Strangethorn Vale, things have been a breeze.

Once it got dark, we went back out and had dinner with Lindsay's parents, celebrating both birthday's and father's day.

On Sunday we spent a lot of the day doing BS like lawn work and playing WoW.

Eventually, we got our act together and went to a new coffee house to work for a bit.



It was fun, and I finally finished my Super Awesome Art Challenge piece, Hula Ghoula. And I like it. Although it was hard to make for some reason. I guess I just didn't quite know where I was going when I started, and I just kept doing the initial drawing over and over.

We played a little more WoW that night. We're in the late forties, approaching 50, so that's awesome. My goal is to just make it to the Outlands. Level 58, here we come...

no more No More Heroes.

A number of months back, I picked up No More Heroes on the Wii. The Wii hasn't got much love from me since I bought it (on a whim), but No More Heroes had the charm and personality to make me take interest. But not quite enough to hold my interest.

If you were ask me, "Should I check out No More Heroes?" I would probably say, "Yes! It's full of creativity and style and originality!"

I would then follow up that statement with, "...but be warned that it's repetitious, unpolished, repetitious, mostly boring, repetitious and poorly designed. Did I mention it's repetitious?"

So despite the game having a strong artistic thread that made the experience worth having, it was also a sprawling mess of mundane repetition held together by a (small) core of fun gameplay and a lot of style.

I'm done with No More Heroes. I didn't finish it, but I can't put up with it's painful design choices and repetition anymore. I made it a good 80-90 percent through the game, about 2 boss battles from the end, and I'm hanging it up.

It's not too hard or anything, it's just too long. It's not worth it anymore.

Sounds bad? It's just my frustration because I wanted to like it because of the style, the story, even the fighting mechanics. They were all good.

The rest of the game design was just busted, though, and I can't help but wish that there some someone involved who reigned in the creator, Suda 51, and said "This needs to be playable."

From what I understand, that was Ryan Payton's job on Metal Gear Solid 4. Hideo Kojima had the ideas, Payton was in charge of making sure the gameplay (esspeically for the Western audience) would match the quality of those ideas. I may be oversimplfying it, but I feel that that's exactly what No More Heroes needed.

I still say play the game. There's alot of good stuff there. But don't commit to it. You'll probably be disappointed.

Sick of Wasting.

Just a Public Service Announcement, Sage Francis just put out another installment in his "Sick Of" mixtape series. You can download it for free from his site, strangefamous.com.

I suggest you grab it even if you don't know who Sage Francis is. He always puts out excellent work, even his mixtapes are totally righteous.

Here's a direct link to the Sick of Wasting's page so you don't have to poke around. At first glace it looks like you have to pay, but go down a couple paragraphs and you'll see you can grab it for free...

Studio Sunday.

Sunday is a quiet day. We took our time getting out the door, and now we're just chilling at the studio making art.


"My, what big headphones you have!" "All the better to hear the JAMS, my dear..."


To those who think that making art is a non-stop thrill ride, I present Exhibit A.


Too much Broccoli in that Thai food.

The end?

productive.

I headed straight to the Paper Bicycle studio after work on Friday. Lindsay and I hung out there for a minute before walking to Fuji Ya to meet up with Ryan. We got some food and then we all decided to head to Ikea.

The studio gets awfully dark when the sun goes down, and it's a couple desks shy of seating everyone, and Ryan needed some stuff too. They closed 15 minutes after we got there, so it was nice to have a trip to Ikea be so forcibly short.

We went back to the studio and built some lamps before heading home. Lindsay and I had all the best intentions to play World of Warcraft, but I was so tired I just went to bed instead. For shame.

Saturday I was actually able to get up at a reasonable hour. Lindsay stayed in bed, but I worked out and went running, did some laundry, and downloaded some new Killzone 2 maps (not quite the same as Call of Duty, but it'll do until my 360 comes back).

When Lindsay was finally moving, we went to Hiawatha Lake to look for some ducks. We found a few, but not as many as we hoped (we'd brought a whole loaf of bread).


Not a duck in sight.


Maybe ducks like to be under bridges? Why not?


Look, a mommy Duck and it's ba... oh, gross...


That water's so nasty I had to do a double-take.


Watch out, Lindsay! There's an OWL on your back!

After walking around the lake and exploring some off-the-beaten-path areas, we went to the big Mall.

We had an agenda, find clothes for our wedding. We've been looking every now and then, but haven't had much luck so far, but it's getting too close for comfort now, so we decided we'd go looking every weekend until we found something.

And as luck would have it, we found everything. Lindsay and I bought every piece of clothing we needed outside of shoes (which NikeID will take care of, for me...). Not only that, but we also stopped into a jewelry store to see what we need to think about for wedding rings, and walked out with two.

All this in less than an hour. Outstanding.

We cruised around a little bit more and then headed home. The mall made us so exhausted we sat down and finally watched Iron Man, which has been sitting in our house for 3 or 4 months. Netflix makes bank off of us...

We thought about going to work on stuff, or hanging out with friends, or doing something, but finally we agreed to play some World of Warcraft.

Here's two more picture that I uploaded for some reason:


Black jacket on a hot summer day. Yes.


Makes me dizzy a little bit.

Crap.

I just sat down to play the new Call of Duty maps with Chris C, and all I got was three red lights.

That makes two.

TappaTappaTappa

Last night I went to the gym after work. I'm on an herbal detox program right now, which recommends avoiding lots of exercise, but I had to go. I couldn't stand it anymore. And it was a fine time.

I went home, made some food and worked on some art. At about 9:30 or so, I had an itch. An itch only Street Fighter 4 could scratch. I called up Ryan and told him to fire up his PS3, cause I'm feeling in-de-structable! (that would be funny if you had SF4...)

I've been getting better and better with the Arcade Stick, so I felt this was a good test to see if I was really back up to speed. Ryan and I are very similarly matched (I have the experience of a lot of Street Fighter games, Ryan just has pure videogame skill flowing through his veins...). I knew if I won roughly 1/2 the time, I would officially be up to par with my old Street Fighter skill.

Plus, Ryan gets pretty competitive and knowing I might be slower than normal would only drive him to beat me harder.

And I'm relieved to say, it went well. I certainly didn't decimate Ryan or anything, but I did manage to win by a (slim) majority.

We played at least 20 matches, and I think the divide was about 60/40 by the end. And that's with me blowing a few rounds trying to for a win with my Zangief against Ryan's Ken, because I just knew I could pull it off (I didn't).

It was a total blast. There was much trash-talking, swearing, shouting, hooting, name-calling, cries of agony and cheers of victory the whole time. By the end, Lindsay was like "Shut up! Do you realize how loud you are?!"

We culminated in an epic final bout, where we were both frantically fighting as hard as we could. It came down to a 3rd round stand-off, each of us down to just a sliver of health. I won, but just by the skin of my teeth.

During the last few seconds the match, Ryan said he could hear the "TappaTappaTappa" of my buttons through the mic.I was hunched over the stick, hammering at the buttons, gritting my teeth and practically sweating in fear.

I'm INto being FAMOUS.

I wrapped up the story in InFamous last night. I was 2 missions from the end when I left for Madison last week and one of those missions was a boss fight. So I sat down last night and less than 1/2 hour later, I was done.

InFamous is a flawed-but-awesome game (I feel like I've said that a lot recently). It might have been clumsy in delivering some of it's narrative (or all of it) and the action was sometimes on the loose side, and the enemies were annoyingly accurate, overall I had a great time.

I will probably keep playing and rid the city of all the crime and gangs (through side missions) and find all the collectibles. And I might even go back and play the game as a Bad character someday, since I played pure Good this time. But it's not a huge priority. It's just fun.

I also practiced up on Street Fighter 4 for a bit, and I'm happy to say, I am getting better, quickly. I'm still making stupid mistakes because I'm thinking so hard about the controls and I'm not fast enough yet. But I made a lot of progress.

I've been switching between a lot of my favorite characters, getting a feel for them again. Akuma, Cammy, Zangief, Balrog, Ken and Ryu, Sakura... I'm getting the hang of it. And with Charge characters (like Balrog) I think I'm better than I was, in many ways.

It's kind of exciting. And kind of frustrating. But more exciting.

Home again home again.

I'm back from Madison. It went fine.

I ended up waiting until 7:30 or so to leave town on Friday. It was a good call, as there was no traffic, as opposed to lots of it. Thankfully construction wasn't bad so I was there by midnight.

While I was there, I helped my mom with her computer, which was the (flimsy) main reason that I was there. I saw my bother and his wife, my sister and her husband, my other brother-in-law and my parents. Meals were had by all, at various times.


me and my bro.


mom.


eric up close and personal.


justin and joan.

I went for a run through the town. I went and saw Up again. It was just as good the second time. It ranged from being just ok to being a lot of fun. I was back by 5 pm on Sunday.



While I was home I picked up my Street Fighter 4 FightStick, which I was super excited about. It was shipped to my parent's house by accident, so I've been waiting for weeks to get my hands on it. I plugged it in as soon as I possibly could and got to fighting. And I suck.

I grew up playing Street Fighter on consoles. Genesis, Super Nintendo and Playstation are where the series lives for me. I'm sure I played it in the Arcade once or twice, but my time was spent mainly with a console controller in hand. And I got pretty good.

So when (pretty much) the whole internet started bemoaning the use of a control pad to play Street Fighter 4; how an arcade stick was needed to play properly, and in fact the only way it was meant to be played, I was skeptical but also curious.

And the official Fightsticks were so nice and pretty that when I found one, I snatched it up.

I'm not going to say I was the best at Street Fighter. But I'm good.

I've played them all, from Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, to Street Fighter III: Thrid Strike and all the iterations in between. And now I've played a ton of Street Fighter 4. That's like 15 years of Street Fighter.

And in that time I've become very familiar with the game. I'm pretty much better than any of my friends (although that's not saying a ton). Combos, counters, specials and supers are no big whoop. I could pull a Wake-Up Shyoruken in my sleep, and Akuma's (pretty complicated) special with just a little bit of concentration.

But with the FightStick, I can't even throw a Hadouken consistently. An arcade stick is so foreign. It blows my mind how much I suck. I am terrible.

I played for a bit against the CPU and generally got my butt kicked. Then I played for an hour or more just in training mode. I wouldn't let myself go to bed until I pulled off 3 Hadouken's, 3 Shyoruken's and 3 Hurricane Kicks in a row without messing up.

Ridiculous. But I'm not giving up. I am going to keep practicing. I have everything about the game committed to memory, so now I just have to retrain my hands. Which is frustrating, and maybe a fool's errand. But I payed cold, hard cash for this stick, and I love the way it feels. I want to be able to use it.

And I can already tell there's some definite benefits to the FightStick. Back-forward Charge moves (especially the more complicated specials) work much more consistently with the stick. So I just have to "stick" with it. Eh?

Eh?

Madison.

I'm heading back to Madison (or more specifically, Stoughton, but I consider it Madison) for the weekend, and I've got to say, I'm not too excited.

Recently I've had a mental turning point, I think I'm pretty much just done with Madison. I'm coming up on being 10 years removed. For 10 years I've lived in Minneapolis, and Madison is becoming a long distant memory.

I haven't kept up with most of my friends. Or all, I guess. They're all great, but we just went different ways, and I'm fine with letting some things go. I can't maintain more relationships than I currently have going, really. I just don't have the energy, patience or desire to do so.

All the spots I remember from Madison have changed, or at least lost their charm from what I remember. I never go back and say "Oh, I have to go here, or see this, or do that again!"

My parents are in a bad situation and my former house is unrecognizable, really. When I return home, it's not like home anymore.

My family is there, obviously, which is why I am going back. I want to see my brothers and sisters, my mom and dad.

But I just don't have a good time going back anymore. Part of this isn't new, I decided a long time ago that Minneapolis feels like my home. It's just now I've decided that Madison doesn't.

World At War.

I ran home and grabbed my stuff after work, and went to the Paper Bicycle studio to work for a few hours. I did some drawing and it went well. After a while, Ryan came to check the place out, and we walked to Tum Rup Thai to get some food.

By the time I got home it was 10:30. I got Call of Duty: World at War in the mail. I bought it during a super-sale since Ryan, Chris C, Ben, Nic and just about everyone else I know has it. When I saw it on sale for 30 bucks, no shipping, I caved.

The general consensus online (from the usual sites, forums and nerd talk) is that Call of Duty 4 is better, but we've all been playing COD4 for a long time now, and the new maps and weapons are incentive enough to change it up, at least until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.

So I popped that in and gave it a whirl. And so far, it seems like the general consensus is right. The map design seems looser, the graphics don't shine with the same polish (it's more the art direction, I think, but maybe the COD engine just wasn't meant to do jungles and nature), the vehicles seem kind of lame, the sound design seems worse (if not in sound quality, then in the repetition and annoying nature of the voice work)...

But all that said, and it's still pretty great. Even less-than-perfect Call of Duty is still better than 95 percent of anything else out there...

And I've only played a couple hours. And although I don't think the maps seem as tight to keep the game flowing, they are complex and less focused, which seems like there's some room for sneaking and hiding, which I'm always a fan of. That's kind of exciting.

So far it's pretty good, if not great. It just looses some of it's luster when it's precursor was so fan-freaking-tastic.

I'm leaving for the weekend, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be itching to play it while I'm gone...

Sick Day.

I didn't go to work today. I woke up super tired with a splitting headache. I went back to bed and the next time I work up I felt better, but I decided to take care of some stuff I knew I had to do...

Like go to the gym. I wasn't feeling 100 percent, and I was still tired, but I'm glad I went.

Or like buy and set up a wireless router for the Paper Bicycle studio. So now they can waste billable hours on the internet, too!

Or like eat Jimmy Johns. There's a Jimmy Johns right next to work, so I can there all the time, and I do. But there's something better about grabbing a #4 from an Uptown Jimmy Johns and eating on the run in the summertime. I don't know what it is, but I assume it's Magic.

Or like fill out address on Save-The-Date cards. It's tough, because I don't care who comes to our wedding, but everyone's invited. It's a party. So it's hard to get up the enthusiasm to actually fill these muthachuckas out. But it must be done... and we are way late.

Or like doing laundry, because I'm leaving town for the weekend and need to look fresh.

That's about it, I guess.

After running all my errands and came home, it was already past 6.

I sat down and played the Uncharted 2 Multiplayer beta. I got an invite to the beta packaged with inFAMOUS (which is totally, awesomely rad) and it finally went live last night at midnight.



So the multiplayer is actually good. Pretty darn good, as far as I can tell from the 4 rounds I played.

I doubt it's something I'd play over Halo 3 or Call of Duty, but it's not bad at all. My expectations were quite low, though. I loved Uncharted, but considering this a tacked-on multiplayer mode on a game known for it's great story, I assumed it would be TERRIBLE. Especially after Metal Gear Online. That was awful.

So I gave Uncharted 2 a 1/2 hour or so, and then cleaned up about 2 gallons of dog puke upstairs. Yuck.

Since then I've just been sitting in the studio rocking out to Black Moutain and drawing.