That was a crazy weekend. Kind of.

This weekend was kind of nuts. On Friday I hit the gym after work, and Lindsay went to Home Depot to buy a bunch of walls, tables and doors for the new studio.

On Saturday, we interviewed a potential addition to Paper Bicycle. He flew in from Brooklyn (not just for us) and we met up with him at Cafeteria to talk before taking him back to the studio and showing him around.

He seems pretty great, but the three of us talked for a bit at Infini-Tea afterward and decided maybe we needed to investigate a couple other options before making any decisions.

Lindsay's parents came into town, and she went out with them Saturday night. I stayed in to work on some projects, play games and relax. I was exhausted from the week and meeting talking business all day, so I just wanted some peace.

The next day we went to Sushi Tango with Lindsay's parents, and then we all went to a wedding. It was a weird, awkward time. It was super religious, there was no dancing (but there were dance lessons to no music) and no one knew anyone. But the food was great.

By the time that was over, I just wanted to go to bed. I should have done some work, but I didn't have it in me.

So today I want to the office a little earlier than usual and wrapped up the project I was working on. I had to turn the project in at a lunch-meeting, so I drove to North Minneapolis and met back up with Wendy, Michelle and Natalie. We were going to go to Black Sheep Pizza, which I love, but Michelle couldn't go. So another co-worker came with. It was fun, and I turned in my project and got another before heading back.

I went to the gym but was in slo-mo mode or something, and spent way too long there. I got back just in time to give Chris S a check before Lindsay gone done with class.

I played another hour or so of Dragon Age 2. I haven't played in a couple weeks, thanks to Lindsay being out of town, and it was a bit hard to get back into. Not only was it hard (I still have it set to Hard), but I forgot what I was doing so it was tough to get up and going again.

I actually turned it off after about 10 minutes and went and did something else for a bit. But I picked it back up and gave it another go, and this time it clicked again. I started winning tough, super-close battles by the skin of my teeth, and talking to companions, and equipping loot... and I was back. Good stuff.

Back to normal

Lindsay came home from L.A. early, early Thursday morning. We ended up going back to bed and sleeping too late.

We eventually made it into work, but no one really wanted to be there. Francesca was already off to class by the time we got there, so Lindsay and I quietly worked a bit, but soon my friend Andy stopped by. I worked with his mom at, and he worked summers in the mail room. Now he's going to MCAD, and we had run into him a couple months ago and told him to stop by.

So he did. He's a really funny guy, and proceeded to sit around with us for a couple hours. I managed to do a bit of work, too. But it was a pretty unproductive day.

I went out for sushi at Fuji Ya with Wendy, Michelle and Natalie, all former co-workers. It was naturally totally awesome, and afterward they came back to the studio for a bit.

I got into the beta for Socom 4, thanks to finally joining Playstation Plus. I'm a sucker, but after loosing all my saves when my PS3 died, I decided I might as well take advantage of the cloud save service. Which you can only access if you joing Playstation Plus. Besides the cloud save feature, the other plus is free games and early access to betas and the like.

So Socom 4. I'm a Socom fan. I liked it back on the PS2, and I still like it. I owned the previous Socom, which was the PS3, online-only Confrontation. It was just so-so, but that pace of shooter is a rare breed, so I'll take what I can get... Socom 4 is already leaps and bounds better, so I'll probably pick it up.

I did pretty well for myself right off the bat, but that's probably because a lot of these kids in the beta have never even heard of Socom before, and don't really get the no-respawn, team-based concept.

I've just played a couple rounds every night or two, because I know any progress I make will just be wiped anyway. But I've also been playing Crysis 2. I almost skipped Crysis 2 and I'm not sure why.

Crysis was always a game I wished I could play. Not really because of the bleeding edge graphics (which is what kept me from playing it) but because I love open shooters that let you approach a situation from a lot of angles.

But from the pre-coverage, Crysis 2 looked much more linear. It didn't take place on a huge island anymore, and the streets of NYC look pretty corridor-y in comparison. And nice graphics are great and all, but the Crysis art-direction wasn't really my cup of tea either. So it kind of fell of my radar.

When it started getting positive review after positive review, I started paying attention. When I found out it is pretty darn open (although by no means is it open world) I decided I should get in on it. After all, I had always hoped the original would come to consoles, so I should be thankful.

And it's good. I'll probably have a better opinion after I've played more, but so far I like it a lot. It looks great, and the multiplayer has me more hooked than I expected. It's no Bad Company 2, but it's a fun game, nonetheless.

When the cat is away...

Lindsay left town to head out to LA for the beginning of the week. On Monday I went to a meeting to get some new work from a client. I got back to the office just in time to take Lindsay and Adam to the airport.

After I dropped them, it was already about 3 or 4 pm. I stopped at Noodles to grab some food, and filled out an interview for I'm Organic. It' the 3rd interview this month, I think, and it's kind of silly.

I feel like I'm known for not having anything to say, but here I am having to answer all these questions. It was fun, though, even though it did take some thinking. I guess I wasn't expecting the questions to be as specific at they were.

While Lindsay was out of town, I had one goal; beat Killzone 3. I've put it on hold for Dragon Age 2, but since Lindsay likes medieval-sword-and-magic-crap and not future-gun-crap, I figured now was a good time to clear that off the deck.

And I liked it. It was a tight shooter, and I like the cover system a whole lot. The graphics ranged from pretty great to probably-the-best-I've-seen-yet. There were moments when I was like 'damn... this is crazy good looking..." but it was also kind of subtle and non as in-your-face as other games. Maybe it's the smaller field-of-view, or the super dense environments, but I feel like it's easy to overlook out stunning it is.

Of course, it was far from perfect. There were a lot of parts where I just died over and over, and I wasn't sure why. Was it unwinnable game conditions, and I was just waiting for a cut scene? Sometimes, maybe. Was it me not knowing my objective or which way I should be going? Sometimes. Was it just poor checkpoints or cheap deaths? Sometimes.

There were a few points where I was just ready to throw my hands of and laugh, but it wasn't too bad. I was able to finish it, on the last night before Lindsay came home, but I probably made myself more aggravated by giving myself a deadline...

The multiplayer is also super cool and interesting, and I did play some of that as well. I really like the unusual class and skills, and I ended up sticking with the Tactician, which no one else seems to play.

Chris C came by on Tuesday to eat some hot dogs at Chris and Robs and take a peek at Kinect. It was a lot of fun, he really liked Kinect Adventures.

Other than that, not a lot happened. I tried to hit the gym as much as possible, and just got my work done. One night I had to stay pretty late to finish a project, and now I don't even remember what that was...

Towards the middle of the week, it started raining. When I went to bed it was thundering and pouring. When I woke up in the morning, there was 6 inches of snow on the ground. Sucky. Crazy.

Lindsay's birthday.

It was Lindsay's birthday this Saturday. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, but eventually I got the bright idea to check Kitchen Window's class schedule. We've already taken the Sushi class and Steamed Buns class, and both were a blast, so when I saw they had a cake decorating class ON her birthday, I knew it was fate.

I signed Adam, Francesca, Lindsay and myself up a week or two before the class, and went down and got all the supplies needed for everyone. By the time it was her birthday, I had managed to keep it a secret, although by that point she did know other people were involved.

So on Saturday we got up and went to class at 10. The class for 4 hours long, and focused mainly on icing and stuff. Which makes sense, I guess.

It was a lot of fun, though, even if I wasn't in the mood to eat sweets.







After that Lindsay and I went home to open presents, make taco dip, and wait for people to arrive for the evening's festivities. I had gotten Lindsay a Kinect, along with Dance Central (it also comes with Kinect Adventures), so I wanted to set it up before anyone showed up. Chris S, Adam, Atom, Francesca and Mary all came by to eat hot dogs at Chris and Robs and dance in front of scary robot eyeballs.













The best picture of the night was taken towards the very end of the night by Chris S. This is Adam tearing it up like only he can:



Eventually we were danced out. Everyone headed home and we went to bed. The next morning I got up and played some Kinect Adventures before getting ready for the day. The game takes pictures of you, as does Dance Central, but unlike Dance Central, it saves them. If I had known that, I wouldn't have played in my underwear.

But on the whole, the technology worked pretty flawlessly (especially considering we had 3+ people dancing at once, with dogs milling around our feet) and it was a blast. Everyone was laughing, sweating and dancing like crazy, and there were rarely even a hiccup.

Dance Central is easily the stand out game, and Harmonix worked their magic again, with a game that's just as clever as Rock Band.

But maybe more surprisingly, Kinect Adventures is also a ton of fun. It controls a lot tighter than I expected, and most of the games are pretty dang fun. For a free pack in, it's pretty solid and I'm amazed at how much fun I've gotten out of it already.

But Oliver hates it.

Twins?

My brother Justin came to town last week. He was in town for a trade show, so it was a one night ordeal, just up and back.

On Monday all of Paper Bicycle went to a meeting. We are starting a new project for the stationery client that's been crushing us for the past couple months. This one is more reasonable, timing-wise. After the day was over, my brother came by the studio and picked me up. We went to Long Fellow and talked for a while, before heading home and playing some games.

It was actually really nice to just get to hang for a while, without it being a family holiday or something like that.

The next morning we got up early and I went with him back to the trade show. I walked the show while he hung out with the reps who carry his product. I took notes in the show book, but there wasn't a ton I found interesting.

Plus, anything that was a little interesting wasn't particularly useful. Since it was Tuesday and one of the last, and slowest, days of the shows, there were only reps there, and no creatives. And the reps aren't much for leads or contacts...

After the show I took Justin to Cafeteria before sending him home. We must be getting more similar in our age, because at least 3 people mistook us for twins in the 18 hours he was up here.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur. There was a lot of finalizing the work for the stationery project, which is finally over (I think). We also got our posters for the ArtCrank show, although there we weren't super happy about them. Some of the details fell out, which is our fault, and it made it kind of boring. We got worried it was too textured right before sending it off, so we toned it back a lot. Too much.

But we took some gouache and hand-distressed each one personally. So it's better now. I think.

I've been playing Dragon Age 2 when I can, it's really good but I'm not making much progress. It's a slow going game, and I only get short bursts to play it, so it's probably going to last for a long time.

This weekend is Lindsay's birthday and I've got some cool stuff planned, I hope it all goes smoothly.

How long?

Jeez? How did I get so bad at this? It seems like my start at Paper Bicycle had something to do with it. So I'd guess that it's either because my life is one long thing with no divisions between work/play/home/work and there never seems like a good point to reflect...

Or I'm too freakin' busy. I COULD write a blog, but when I've got emails coming in from 5 people at once who all want something and don't realize/care that there's other demands being made, then it makes writing about Dragon Age 2 seem secondary.

But it's not. Or, it shouldn't be. Probably. Maybe?

Actually, there's been a lot going on outside of normal work. Our upstairs renovation is now basically done; aside from some light painting, it's ready to roll. It was a long, long process (start to finish, it must have been months. Did we even start this year? Or was it in December? I can't remember.)

Apart from that, we created a poster for the upcoming ArtCrank show. Which took longer than expected, but it turned out well (I hope, we haven't gotten the final prints back so I guess there's still room for failure).

I also finished, and printed a shirt for I'm Organic. It was a tough one, only because the design took several revisions, and color was impossible because the t-shirt we were planning on was out of stock at the last minute, so we had to go back to the drawing board a couple times. But it's out in the wild.

I've also been working on 2 SAAC pieces at once, and one is pretty complex compared to my normal work (actually they both are, but I'm still on sketch phase for the second so it might change).

I've been trying to go to the gym more regularly now that it's been getting nice, so between juggling all that jazz left very little time for games. I made sure to fit in some time, but it was usually between the hours of 1-2:30 am.

Oh yeah. Also, my PS3 broke down. Bad. And I had to have it fixed, but not until I went through a super-painful troubleshooting and reconciliation period. I won't go into detail, because it boils my blood so bad, but I will say it took weeks, I lost all my data, and it cost me a lot of money. And it really shouldn't have been that way (well, maybe the money part I understand). But I lost all my PS3 data from the last 3/4 years due to obvious oversights in design by Sony.

I got my PS3 back a week or so ago, and I've played a bit of Killzone 3. Probably one hour of the campaign, and about 3 full multiplayer matches (which are closer to Battlefield length than Call of Duty). It seems really solid. I actually liked the Killzone 2 multiplayer a lot; I thought the classes were varied and unique compared to any other shooter, and the Warzone mode is outstanding. Every game should copy that mode, for real.

But I put off playing Killzone 3 most of the week (even though my broken PS3 had already put it off for a few weeks already) because I was playing Beyond Good and Evil HD. Which is an up-rezed game from 2003 that came out on XBLA for 10 bucks. It's really, really good. I totally overlooked it when it came out (the same day as the Prince of Persia PS2-era reboot). I remember even playing a demo and passing (the demo showcased one of the worse parts in the game, in my opinion). But I've been wanting to play it for a few years now, and I even got a PS2 copy a while back to revisit it.

But as soon as my PS2 copy showed up in the mail, they announced this HD version. So I waited. And I'm glad I did, because I'm sure it made a big difference (not only the graphics, but the achievements). I started playing just to have a peek, and decided to put everything else on hold (like Killzone 3, Little Big Planet 2 and Dragon Age 2) until it was finished. Being just a downloadable game, I figured if I quit and 'lost my place' in the story/objectives, I wouldn't come back.

So even though Killzone is said to only take around 5 hours, I went ahead and plowed through BG&E, which clocked in just under 10. And it was a treat. I mean, it still had some of the hallmarks of a game made in 2003, but I was really impressed. If I had played it when it came out, I'm sure it would have blown my mind.

I stayed up really late a couple of nights this weekend played it. I knew I shouldn't but I couldn't put it down. Good stuff.

I'll talk more about the likes of Killzone, DA2 and more later. I should go to bed because it's now 2 am.