EyeToy Groove

Posted on by Nimgimli

I picked up EyeToy Groove the other day and just gave it a brief workout. Looks like it’ll be fun. It’s pretty much what you probably expect: DDR played with your arms and body.

I like DDR but I don’t think my downstairs neighbors like it much, so this’ll be a nice change when I just feel like jumping around looking silly now and then. It certainly doesn’t give the cardio workout that DDR does, but after not too long my arms were in fact tired.

The only real negative I see so far is that the songs take a long time to load and there’s a lot of Yes/No menu questions between them, which really breaks up the rthym. And other little dumb featurs are missed, like it asks for your name to put in the high score list….every time you make a high score. It should just default to the last name that you entered, y’know? So little kinda polish things weaken it a bit.

I’ll have to drag a kidlet down and play some multiplayer and see how that goes.

Still, its pretty much what I expected, and I’m content. Really looking forward to the second generation EyeToy stuff, though, like that hoverboard game!

Onimusha 3: Demon Siege

Posted on by Nimgimli

I finally fired this up last night, with Carmina (a dedicated Onimusha fan…I guess the male lead is easy on her eyes πŸ™‚ ) watching on. It was late and we basically just get started, but already I’m hooked. Hell, the intro movie was worth $40 to me. It was stunning. The in-game graphics are really good too. Gameplay hasn’t changed much, but that’s fine with me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The voice acting is still kind of weak, sadly, with the exception of Jean Reno, who delivers all his lines in French, so its hard for me to say if he does a good job or not, but it lends an authentic feel to the game and I’m glad they went that route.

The technology that lets them map real actor’s onto 3D models is really astounding. I mean, in the CGI scenes, its sometimes hard to tell this isn’t a real actor. And in game they look really good, too. Very authentic.

Looking forward to spending more time with this one.

God of War

Posted on by Nimgimli

Been a while since I added anything to the gaming watchlist, but I’m starting to look beyond World of Warcraft for gaming entertainment for the first time in ages.

God of War is an upcoming (way upcoming…a 2005 release planed) PS2 game that brings kind of a new twist to platforming. Its much darker than most platformers, for one thing, and it also lets the player choose a fighting style on the fly. You can play it as a straightfoward fighting platformer, or lean more towards being a magic user (ranged attacks) or you can take almost a puzzle-based approach to the fighting, sort of like the combat in Gladius.

Well, its still a long way off but here’re a couple of preview to whet your appetite:
God of War E3 Preview from Gamespy
God of War ‘Hands On’ E3 preview from IGN

Guest Post on Cyrano

Posted on by Nimgimli

Carmina and I saw Cyrano de Bergerac (a few posts down) together, and afterwards we talked about it a bit, and then later she sent me this email. Seemed worth sharing with the world. πŸ™‚

—–
I was thinking about Cyrano de Bergerac tonight, and about Roxane, and
about how I called her a ditz during the movie. The book I was reading
today, Embroiderer’s Story, traced the history of the British
embroidery tradition from the time of Elizabeth I through the 20th
century, and related the relationship of the craft to the state of
women’s lives in all those periods. (There -IS- a point to this, I
swear. It’s just going to take me a bit of work to explain to you how
it’s all related!)
Continue reading “Guest Post on Cyrano”

Giving blood

Posted on by Nimgimli

I donated blood today, for the first time in my life. It was such a non-event that I feel guilty for all the blood drives I’ve skipped. I’d heard all the tales of feeling faint and weak after and all that, but I didn’t feel a thing, except a little bored while the bag filled up.

From now on I’ll be doing it every time they have a blood drive at work. You get free juice and cookies, and a nice half-hour break out of your work day. What’s not to like about that!!? πŸ™‚

Seriously, somewhere, sometime, some stranger will be helped out by this donation.

So what the hell? I guess I did a good thing. Go figure.

Scallops

Posted on by Nimgimli

When I was a boy in the fall I got to watch a process that never failed to fascinate me.

There was an old building in the back of my grandparents lot. The boards were grey with age, twisted and warped so you could see ribbons of daylight from inside.

There was a huge flat table in there, anachronistic in that it was made of steel or something. And rows of shelving for storage.
Continue reading “Scallops”

Will Wright Wisdom

Posted on by Nimgimli

When asked in an interview in OPM, “Do you have any advice for aspiring game designers?” Wright answered:

Expose yourself to ideas, subjects, and design approaches from outside the games industry. There’s a world of useful stuff out there for you to discover, and by pulling from outside sources, you’ll contribute to broadening games rather than inbreeding them.

Substitute just about anything for ‘gaming’ in this and it still sounds like good advice to me.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tonight’s movie selection was 1990’s version of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Gιrard Depardieu as Cyrano, the delicious Anne Brochet as Roxane, and Vincent Perez as Christian.

What a great production. Now I’ve got to confess that I never read the original play by Edmond Rostand so I didn’t know the whole story. I knew about Cyrano speaking for Christian to Roxane, whom he loved, and that he had a big nose and all that rot. So the first half of the film was reasonably familiar ground. But the second half (after they go off to war) was all new to me and a wonderful tale.

Well worth watching, if you haven’t seen it.

Bubba Ho-Tep

Posted on by Nimgimli

Spent a lazy afternoon today watching Bubba Ho-Tep, the Bruce Campbell flic that just hit DVD.

Very silly movie. Campbell plays Elvis Presley, who is alive and semi-well and living in a nursing home. Ossie Davis plays a fellow who thinks he’s JFK. (Elvis: “Jack, you know Kennedy was a white man, right?” Jack: “That’s shows the genius of their plan! They dyed me!!”) Well it turns out an ancient egyptian pharoh has come back from the dead and is feeding on the souls of the old folks at the home, so the two old boys decide to put a stop to it.

Cheesy effects, a silly premise…its a just-plain-weird movie. Sadly it wasn’t great. It was really slow to get going, and a lot of Elvis’s problems give the film an R rating that could’ve easily been PG with a few minor script changes (I thought).

Still a kindof fun mindless Saturday matinee kind of flick.