boooring.

I downloaded the demo of the new XBLA game, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, on Wednesday and gave it a go. It seemed ok. It's hard to go wrong with Castlevania, but it's been getting mixed reviews.

It's a multiplayer focused game, where up to 6 people can play in a level at once. There's a 30 minute time limit, and you have to reach the boss and defeat him before the time runs out. There's lots of routes, shortcuts and treasure, and somethings can't be accessed without other people to help. I would also think that some of the bosses would be near impossible without help, unless the gear gets really, really, really good.

There's only six levels, but you're supposed to kind of grind the levels for money and loot. It's possible to play solo, but it's hard.

The demo only allows single player, making it tough to tell how fun and balanced the game was. So I sat on the fence.

But I kept going back and playing the demo level, even though I don't get to keep any of the rewards I reap. After 4 or 5 repeat plays, I decided I obviously liked it.

And I do. It's great fun. I played solo for a bit, getting my equipment and figuring out the secrets in the first level. But I couldn't beat the boss. So I jumped on line and got into a game with 5 other people. 5 other people who had already played a lot.

We ran through the entire game, flew threw it. I'd try to keep up, but they were fast and had better gear than I. Also, in the later levels everyone starts in different parts of the map, so I couldn't even use anyone as a guide. So I was usually stuck in a smaller area while everyone was whooping up on the bosses.

Even the last level only took about 7 minutes with these dudes. I get what they find, though, so now I've got some sweet, sweet loot, and going back and playing solo is much easier.

I like it, and I'm going to keep playing it. I guess you can't always trust the reviews. But I guess i knew that.

On Saturday I went running. We made some curry, and Chris C and Jessie came over to share it. Then we all took a trip to United Noodle. We got tons of weird, and often bad, candy. We watched Zombieland and worked after they left, and I capped the night off with some late night Monster Hunter. It's been a while since I played, but once I got back into it, it was fun. I just got to an interesting part where you have to fight the actual bosses, and you have to use traps, tranqs and timing to capture them alive.

It adds a cool wrinkle to the otherwise "kill a bunch of monsters" formula.

Brian Kelly is in town, so on Sunday we met up with him and went to Longfellow. I left my wallet there but didn't realize it for about 8 hours. He'll be watching our house while we're in Iceland, so we showed him the ropes. Then we went to the studio. Natalie and her boyfriend stopped by to see it, but otherwise we played Street Fighter and got gelato. When he left, i finished up most of my work.

I went back to play Monster Hunter that night, and noticed that my TV input selector said 480i when I switched on my Wii. I was like "whaaa?!?" and went into the Wii settings to switch it to 480P, and what a difference! I guess it some how defaulted back to 480i when I got my new TV, and everything looked TERRIBLE. I figured it was just due to the jump from a 32" screen to a 46" one, but oops. Is my face red.

Man, these are some boring posts lately.