Month: April 2008

>PSP’d!

>So I couldn’t contain myself any longer; on my lunch hour today, I went to the Best Buy over on 5th Avenue and bought:

  • PSP slim
  • 2gb memory stick
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
  • God of War: Chains of Olympus
  • MLB08
  • GTA: Liberty City Stories
  • GTA: Vice City Stories

Total: $400.13. It’s burning a hole in my bag; all I want to do is rip open the box and start playing, but I know that as soon as I do, I’ll start getting super-busy at work, and in any event, I didn’t buy any sort of carrying case, and I don’t really want to have it just sitting loose in my bag.

That said. This is a watershed moment: this is my first piece of Sony-manufactured gaming equipment that I’ve ever purchased. I played a lot of PS1 at my buddy Jongre’s apartment back in my post-college years (mostly the Oddworld games, with some Crash Bandicoot here and there), but never owned one myself; I bought a Dreamcast instead of a PS2, and then bought an Xbox; I had a Gameboy and then a DS, which covered my handheld needs, and I’m still holding off on a PS3 until later this year.

The PSP, though… it’s strange. I’ve wanted one ever since they announced it, but then the dead pixel thing happened when it launched and outraged everybody, and until recently there’s been almost nothing worth playing on it. Plus, that horrendous “all i want for christmas is a psp” fake-commercial really turned me off – even now I’ve got that fucking song stuck in my head.

I’ve seen people playing it on the subway and I’m always curious to see it in action, and yet I never really get that good a look; display units at stores are generally useless, since they’re (a) never turned on or (b) playing something I don’t care about.

There are other games that I’m curious to check out…

  • Lumines (although I’ve already got it on XBLA, and I’m not very good at it)
  • the 3d Castlevania game
  • Wipeout / Wipeout Pure
  • flOw
  • Jean D’arc
  • Disgaea (or however you spell it)

…but I’m not, like, foaming at the mouth for any of them, and I’m sure I can track them down on GameFly.

If I have time tonight, I’ll try to have a full rundown for tomorrow.

>Bully; Flatout

>This lead-up to GTA4’s release is killing me; nothing but crap for new releases. So while I’m bulldozing my way through Bully, I’m also catching up on some older titles via GameFly.

Flatout: Ultimate Carnage is a game I wanted to love; I was a fan of the original title on the Xbox and I was looking forward to the inevitable next-gen entry. In some ways, it’s great: it’s gorgeous, and even with 12 cars driving through dirt and running over piles of tires and debris, it always maintains a smooth frame rate. However, it’s also frustratingly difficult. I won my first few races pretty easily (and the rubber-band AI was actually pretty effective in carving out some exciting victories), and then, suddenly, I was getting my ass kicked left and right, and no amount of restarting (or car-tuning) made any discernible difference. Which sucks.

And as for Bully: I finished Chapter 2 last night. Probably 12-15 hours in at this point. What does it say about me that my main priority with this game was to make sure I attended and excelled in every class? At this point, though, I’m glad I’ve been so studious – it’s unlocked lots of useful skills. My biggest complaint in Bully is that the game clock moves at a tremendous rate, and I feel like there’s never any real time to explore or do anything, which somewhat defeats the purpose of playing in a sandbox. Each day in Bully, for me, goes something like this:

8:00: wake up, save game.
9:00: find class, do class.
11:30: save.
1:00: class.
3:30: save.
3:30-12:00 – jobs/missions/errands/exploration.

Which is, in some ways, what real life is like. Except that in Bully, one minute = one second, so each afternoon I feel like I only have time to do one or two things. With so many cops around, truancy is a dangerous option. This is why I feel compelled to complete all my classes, so that I don’t have to hang around the school.

Anyway. I’m not sure it will get me through until GTA4’s release, but it’ll have to do for now.