11.30.08
Posted in Bailout, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Site News, Writing
at 7:53 pm
So I’m back in Pittsburgh. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving… Really, I’d have more to say but right now I’m just a little tired. The weekend was good, with a few hiccups, but I’m ready for bed already. Oh, and for the record, I did hit my 50K goal for NaNo on Saturday night, so there’s that– I’ll probably spend the rest of the week finishing up the last four chapters before I get even more distracted by Chrono Trigger. I swear, that game is so good it’s bad for me. Anyway, catch you all… eventually. Oh, I have game and anime reports due on the LJ at some point this week… so I suppose I’ll see you there.
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11.22.08
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing
at 3:26 pm
I seldom make blog posts “in the field”– the fact that I use the WordPress app for the phone makes me glad it was free– but right now I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Monroeville, my usual writing place, and I’ve just hit the halfway point of the new draft of Blueberries. I still haven’t figured out a new, more appropriate title for the book yet (Blueberries stemmed from a conversation near the middle of the original draft), but that’s later. Right now, the halfway point is as good as any to give the usual update on how things are going.
( Beyond this cut there exist spoilers. Read at your own risk… » )
Overall, I’m looking forward to being able to present this to you guys when the time comes. With Thanksgiving coming up, I’m certainly not going to be able to get the whole thing done before the first of December, but I’ll definitely hit the 50K mark; I’m just barely under 40K right now (and I really ought to get back to that, in point of fact) but I’m planning on getting a couple thousand more each night before I head back to the homestead on Wednesday morning. Trust me, you’ll know when I hit 50.
Oh, and once this writing is all done (and the thing is formatted properly), I’ll be doing quite a bit of catching up; I’m looking forward to announcing my 30/30/109 list. Ciao, kiddies.
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Posted in Game Cleared 2008, Gaming
at 8:42 am
At 8:30a, I defeated The Collector, final boss of LittleBigPlanet on the Playstation 3. This is the thirty-second game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP), followed by Psychonauts (XB) and Penny Arcade Ep. 2 (360). Game was cleared over 24 days.
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11.17.08
Posted in Demolitionist, Gaming, Rants
at 9:47 pm
(Doing something new, folks: any time a demo strikes my fancy, I’ll write up impressions here. I’ve done it enough for other demos, might as well give it a formal name. Anyway, enjoy.)
RPGamer broke the news about the Neverland Card Battles demo today, and it was almost as an afterthought that I gave it a spin. I kinda wish I hadn’t, though; while the game’s mechanics are sound, and a bit more intuitive than Culdcept’s, the execution is quite a bit lacking– due mostly to the utter uselessness of the online help and the excruciating sound effects. I skipped over the story under the impression that I wouldn’t want it spoiled for me; and I’m not about to go back to find out what I missed.
The game’s mechanism for obtaining mana is based on the number of squares on the playfield colored in with your color; you color squares by walking over them with your units. This brings a strategic element to the combat– or at least that’s the intent. Instead it makes the game entirely a turn-based strategy game hamstrung by a patently ridiculous and severely broken card deployment mechanism. Whereas Culdcept had you winning based on an accumulation of points, NCB requires you to annihilate your opponent’s Dominator unit to win. It’s broken because the enemy can just sit back and flood the field with cheap monsters which you have to hack through agonizing square by square. The only thing stopping you from doing the same is that you will always get crappy cards.
Ordinarily I would give the game the benefit of the doubt given that a demo, without the ability to customize the deck, isn’t a fair assessment of a game like this; but the problem is that I see just so much wrong with this game that I am grateful I had the chance to try it before wasting money or more time on it. The only thing this has produced, really, has been the name for a new feature on the site, and a desire to fire up Culdcept once the writing is done.
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11.13.08
Posted in Gaming, Shameless Self-Promotion
at 8:31 pm
This evening, my Xbox Live Gamerscore reached a grand total of 5125 points over 278 Achievements. The achievement which brought me to the 5000-point mark was “Return”, worth 50 points, for completing the ninth mission in Halo 3. It has been 112 days since the last thousand-point milestone. My achievement value average is 18.44 points. It is interesting to note that I have only acquired one non-mission related Achievement for Halo 3 to this point. As with the 4000-point level, this personal milestone offers absolutely no significance whatsoever save a small amount of pride.
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Posted in Game Cleared 2008, Gaming
at 8:23 pm
At 8:02p, I completed the ninth and final mission in Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. This is the thirty-first game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP), followed by Mega Man 9 (Wii) and Psychonauts (Xbox). Game cleared over (mostly) five days.
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11.11.08
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Site News, Writing
at 5:18 am
Don’t know if you guys saw it on the forums this morning, but there was a little bit of a spammer’s streak. This hasn’t happened in a very long time, and I was a little surprised; but the offending accounts and posts have been removed, and all is well again. So, yeah.
I’m halfway through the word count requirement for NaNo, but in point of fact I’ve only gone through a third of the plot that I wanted to do. I’ve also pulled that plot slightly off the rails, too, so I’ve got to do some revising of the outline to this point. Ultimately I’m still in good shape; with any luck I can get a little bit more hammered out in the next few days and have another chapter done by the end of the week. (Of course, I say that heading into what’s probably the hardest chapter to write well… and I can’t really skip around on this project.) We’ll see how things work out.
Ciao for now, folks.
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11.09.08
Posted in Gaming, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing
at 7:43 pm
I don’t want to obsess over this too much since there’s nothing more that I can do, so I promise you that this is the last you’ll hear about the mouse. Until the situation changes. Or the little bastard shows his face again. Yeah.
Beyond that, the novel writing continued fairly well– I’m only half a chapter behind where I wanted to be (after schedule slip), and I’m sure I can pick up the slack over this week. I was worried that I was going to hurt my hands more, but using the wrist brace helped tremendously to a point where I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble tomorrow. So there’s that.
And yeah. I like Burnout Paradise. I was going to write up a lot about it but I figure that it would mostly just be preaching to the choir right now. A choir of screeching tires, shattering glass, and squealing twisted metal. Fun fun crashy.
Catch you folks tomorrow. Maybe. Don’t count on daily updates just yet, but I’m trying to get back into that habit, I really am.
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11.08.08
Posted in Bailout, Rants, Site News
at 8:13 am
I had a post for this morning about Burnout Paradise. Then the mouse in my apartment introduced himself. Needless to say I’m not in a good mood right now…
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11.05.08
Posted in Bailout, NaNoWriMo, Rants
at 4:36 pm
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I’m back to my usual boring existence of writing and not doing much else. So we’re back to boring blog entries for the time being. Deal with it.
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