Very recently I gave up on the James Bond game (it got boring about 2/3 of the way through) and started playing a game called Ninja Gaiden instead. This game just looks gorgeous on my widescreen TV. The character moves a bit like the Prince in UbiSoft's Prince of Persia game, only with a lot more moves (with still more becoming available as you progress through the game).
I think what I love most about Ninja Gaiden, though, is the level of difficulty. With most action games I play, whether they're first-person shooters, platformers, or third-person "fighting" games, I master the controls relatively quickly and then typically just coast through the game. Sure, an occasional boss fight might trip me up for a while, but for the most part, these games are pretty easy.
This game is not. It's hard. And I don't mean hard in an unfair way, or in any way that even becomes particularly frustrating. It's hard in the sense that you aren't allowed to coast through it. Go on autopilot for any period of time, and you'll die. Plain and simple. You have to stay on your toes the whole time you're playing, and the boss fights are especially challenging. I can't remember the last time an action game made me think so carefully about how to win combats, about what strategies to apply to make it through a given section, and that punished me more for "doing the wrong thing" or just being too slow on the uptake. :)
Some might be turned off by the level of difficulty, but for me, the game is just non-stop fun. Time to get back to playing. :)
Ok, so here comes the first personal blog entry in a long time. I'd apologize for not having blogged in a while, but after all, it is my blog, so if I want to neglect it, I'm well within my rights to do so. :)
I go through cycles where blogging about work is more interesting to me (and so the Safari blog blossoms), and then I go through cycles where the personal blog is more interesting (like now). Other times I just want to delete both of them and forget about blogging all together.
So what's been going on with me lately? Hmm. Well, for starters, I'm sick as a dog. Just completely and totally sick. I've had a stopped up nose since Saturday, have been running a slight fever, and am coughing all the damn time. I'm worried I'm going to infect everyone else in the house. I'm surprised I haven't been locked up in quarantine with only chicken noodle soup and my Mac for company.
I've been trying to make myself feel better by playing the new James Bond game, Everything or Nothing, on my XBox. My reflexes are really terrible, though, so all I'm really doing is dying a lot. One would think that this would be difficult to do in a game where you can pause and use your "Bond sense" to slow down time to a crawl so that you can pinpoint your enemies, but I'm managing somehow.
I just got back from Las Vegas last weekend where I played my first ever casino poker, 3/6 limit hold 'em. Rebecca and Stuart were also there playing poker, and Stuart even earned himself a poker nickname: "The Suit." Turns out he was the only guy in the poker room dressed up. It was encouraging to see that even in Vegas people sucked at low limit poker and seemed to lack even the most rudimentary math skills that would have helped them figure out what they should be playing (and what they should be folding).
Too bad I came back with the plague. :)