New Year

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were filled with gaming goodness, because mine certainly weren’t, and the situation won’t go any better.

First, my brother is leaving home to go live with his girlfriend (who he has been with for only 2 months) and he is leaving with some of stuff, one of it being the HD TV that was his. I am now stuck with the non HD TV.

It really makes a difference in some games. For example, Battlefield 1943’s texts are way more difficult to read. Not that it really matter, the game is about shooting dudes, but the issue is that the enemies dudes and my team’s dudes are pretty hard to tell from one another at a certain distance; bad when you are an avid sniper.

I guess I’ll need to learn to live with it as if it were 2006 again, because there is no way I’m able to afford an HD TV in the next few months, university being a costly mistress. For a guy who says, “I don’t care about the quality of the graphics in a game, more about the style”, I guess I will have to live by my word.

Oh and he also left with the Wii. That will have to wait too, but I can live with it better.

On a related note, I haven’t played a lot of new games during the vacations. I took a break from new stuff after my little run through Modern Warfare 2 and mostly played old favorites like Oblivion and Chrono Trigger (talk about retro). I’m going to wait for the release of Mass Effect 2 to get into new games. And boy will I have to play it tight.

My console gaming time was reduced to about a day and a half, more or less. The worse is, so many great games are coming soon. Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Bioshsock 2, and Heavy Rain. And there are probably that I am forgetting. I guess I’ll need to play some mad marathon sessions to get through these.

Such is the life of an academic. I guess the good thing is, I will spend more time writing and reading about games, and watch movies. Sure, it sucks that I will have less time to play games, which is kind of the point of it, but I will live with it and maybe even enjoy it more as it will become those rare quality times spent with my favorite medium.

And then there’s TV… Oh shit.

Byebye holidays, hello school.

So, how was everyone's holidays this year. Mine were pretty good. The only gaming related thing I got was an old Megaman NES cartridge from my brother. Some kind of collector's item even if it isn't really one as of right now. As for gaming itself, it was pretty quiet. I went through Banjo-Kazooie at 100%, something I would never have hoped to achieve when I was younger. I played a lot of Saint's Row 2 to get some of the holidays stress out, played a bit of Pokemon Diamond on long car trips and enjoyed that Iphone/Ipod touch gaming jewel that is Rolando.

I never got to play Locoroco as I don't have a PSP. Rolando is, from what I heard and saw, the closest thing I could ever get. To quickly resume the gameplay, you tilt your Iphone/Ipod touch to move the little rolando, you drag your finger up on the screen to make them jump and you can use your finger to interact with on screen contraptions such as catapults and fans. The controls are simple and instinctive. Everything acts the way it should. The simple gameplay really makes Rolando an addictive and very fun game. The colourful palette is also a nice change from the usual grey and brown tones most games are giving us these days. The music is mostly forgettable but at least won't fall on your nerves. A definitive buy for anyone searching for a nice little game to make time pass.