MGS, DS and Genesis!

Started Metal Gear Solid 4 on Father’s day and now I’m in the middle of chapter 2. Love it so far. I kind of skipped GTA 4 since it seemed like it would be a much larger time suck than MGS 4, but hopefully I’ll get to it sometime this year. After MGS, the only thing I want to play is Soul Calibur IV (wow lots of fours this year).

The DS has come in handy for recent travel. Played little bits of:
- Izuna Unemployed Ninja (great character art, very tough dungeon crawler, may play again)
- Touch the Dead (decent, probably won’t “touch” again)
- Meteos Disney (The sound effects are not as compelling as the regular Meteos and the Disney tunes are a bit too subtle for my tastes)
- Sonic Rush (The most satisfying one out of the bunch. Exactly how I wanted a pseudo 3D Sonic to play. Fast action and wild level designs. Excellent)

The PlayStation 2 has become my go-to retro machine thanks to Taito Legends 2, Capcom Classics, and the SNK Arcade collection. These collections are also massive bargains compared to paying $5+ for single titles on the Wii or Xbox Live. Over the weekend I added the Sega Genesis Collection to the group. It’s been on my want list for a while so it was great to finally grab one. It’s a fantastic group of titles and they all have supplemental trivia, tips, and box art. Lots of good unlockables like the arcade version of Altered Beasts and developer interviews. I think there are like 28 games included, but you’ll get your money’s worth just for Shinobi III and Phantasy Star IV alone. (Shinbo screen taken from Console Classix)

Baseball cards and dried fruit

So what’s been going on? It’s kind of all over the map. So in no particular order, some other random stuff since the last post:

Dried fruit – I don’t know why, but I was eating a lot of it for awhile. Pineapples, papaya, whatever. I think that craving has passed mostly.

Subway’s Pastrami sandwich – I haven’t eaten at Subway regularly in years, but their new pastrami is great. The combination of decent hot pastrami and loads of subway veggies is quite pleasing.

Baseball cards – I was cleaning out my stuff from my mom’s house and happened across a ton of my old baseball cards. On paper (and according to some grading sites) I have some decently valued cards, but they can be had for far cheaper online. eBay is the real bellwether of card value and it appears the industry still has not recovered from the crash in the early 90s. It does put what cards I find most valuable in perspective. Even though the values have gone way down, my favorite cards are still my Will Clark rookie collection. You gotta collect what you like and not chase after players as an investment because you never know.

Rummaging through all those old cards got me in the mood to check out some new cards. I picked up a few packs of 2008 Topps and Upperdeck. Although they were all very shiny and nice looking cards, that same magic just wasn’t there. Then I decided to try out buying specific players. Bought a quartet of Ichiro rookie cards (Upper Deck, Donruss, Bowman, Topps) for pretty cheap. Like Will Clark, Ichiro is one of my favorite players and the value of the cards doesn’t matter to me. Looking at the Ichiro cards finally did bring back the good baseball card feelings. After that mini-spree though, I think I’m done for awhile. I might start buying some more whenever Kaz is old enough to be interested in baseball cards. He’s certainly going to inherit a decent stash of older cards from me. Maybe at least a handful will be worth more than $10 by then.

PS2 lives on

Persona 4 was recently announced in Japan…for the PS2! There’s definitely a part of me that is quite happy to see big releases continue on the platform. I still keep around my PS2 slim (it’s just too cool looking to get rid of) and it has plenty to keep it spinning. For domestic releases, I have on my radar Persona 3 Fes, Arcana Heart, SNK Arcade Classics vol. 1, and Yakuza 1 & 2. That’s not counting the few PS2 titles I still have to get to on the shelf.

I’m probably most looking forward to the SNK Classics collection. I sold my NeoGeo home system a while back (got it used for under $100 in Japan) so it’ll be great to play these games again and at a stupendous bargain price. Hopefully the emulation is good.

HD film festivals and pricey tech

Clive Owen wasn’t in Bourne Ultimatum, but I wanted to watch the trilogy in order and he was in the first one.

After that, the Children of Men HD-DVD I had on Netflix for seemingly forever finally got sent. Fantastic movie. Will probably purchase it whenever it moves to Blu-ray. After that, Shoot’em Up on Blu-ray arrived. This was also another minor miracle as most every newish Blu-ray disc on Netflix is tagged “Very Long Wait”. The movie is quite enjoyable if you can turn your brain off and go along for the ride. It’s definitely not for everyone though.

By the time I got to Inside Man, it struck me that I’ve seen a good amount of Clive Owen in a short time frame. An accidental CO film festival if you will. I saw Inside Man in theaters and have been wanting to re-watch it at home to see how much held up. It totally does and I like it even more now.

If you haven’t seen any of the above, all are highly recommended except for Shoot’em Up. If you only had time for one, I’d go with Children of Men.

iPod Touch 32GB
Apple today released a 16GB version of the iPhone and a 32GB iPod Touch. I’ve been very tempted by the Touch and 32GB is the minimum happy point in terms of storage for a video device. Both of the higher capacity models weigh in at a honking $499 which is about $200 more than I feel comfortable with. Finances are totally baby-driven now so there is no way I could make it work anyhow.

The good news is that this totally sets up a much larger upgrade and price adjustment for both the iPhone and Touch for later this year.

The Cool
I’ve been taping random stuff so I have things to watch in the middle of the night for baby feedings and fussy times. Bullit has been playing on the Universal HD channel, so I took that in last night. The movie oozes style from the very first frame. The film has a deliberate, lazy pace punchuated by a jazzy score and of course the legendary car chase scene. Even now the car chase is impressive and the realness of the danger is impressive. Actors don’t come any cooler than Steve McQueen and he carries an otherwise uneven movie. Maybe I should do a Steve McQueen film festival next?

Pure Love

I became a father for the first time earlier this month to a bouncing baby boy. The amount of love I feel for him is indescribable. It’s been hard going back to work and not seeing his face and holding him and trying to figure out why he is crying at any particular time.

My late father didn’t spoil me much (my mom on the other hand is another story), but one thing he would never deny me was books. As a writer, he obviously loved books and had tons of them. He even bought me comic books on a regular basis, since in Japan, they are read by people of all ages and not viewed as junk literature. One thing that was hard for me to get either of my parents to buy me was videogames. For one, they were expensive and two, I’m sure it all looked like a waste of time to them.

This won’t be a problem for my son. He’ll have plenty of access to games and I can’t wait till he’s old enough to play some with me. I’ll know which ones are appropriate for his age and what is not. Of course if it turns out he doesn’t like games much that’ll be fine. Who knows what kids will want to do with their free hours in the future. Probably something that looks like a waste of time to me.

A quick one

Short thoughts:

Blade Runner 5-disc collection on Blu-ray –You don’t need me to babble on about it with all the rave reviews out there. Suffice it to say I’ve watched my older DVD copy at least a dozen times and the older theatrical cut on VHS at least as many so this collection was Xmas in a box.

New American Gladiators – Love it. They might have kept too many of the older games, but the tougher eliminator is good stuff.

Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles – It’s not the best game in the world, but I was super obsessed with getting S rankings on every stage.

Video camera – I might be needing a new video camera soon. Leaning towards a hard drive model and it will have to be HD. CES is happening just in time. New models = lower prices for existing stock.

New computer? – My plan is still to wait till StarCraft 2 actually comes out before committing to a new computer since I don’t want to pay much for it. The only snag will be if Apple unveils a touch enabled Mac Book. I have a super cheap refurbished Tablet PC I’ve been using to mainly just read comics/manga (check out Marvel’s Digital Comics!) and I love the form factor. So basically I’m looking for a larger iPod touch, except it’s a real computer. If they manage to release one this year, I’m totally in.

Love me some Mass Effect (Spoiler free!)

I’m already into my second Mass Effect play through and will eventually play at least one more time after that (perhaps one more on top of that depending on DLC). I’ll list the details of what I’m doing/planning at the very end of the post so folks not wanting spoilers can just stop reading. So is it my “Game of the Year”? It’s a pretty solid lock. It just hits everything I wanted a follow up to KOTOR to be and then some.

There hasn’t been much time for any other game except for King of Fighters XI since it can be enjoyed in very short bursts. If you still enjoy 2D fighting games at all, you should absolutely pick this up for the PS2. It’s packed with new characters and little touches for fans to discover. I have to admit that I’m not getting as much enjoyment out of XI as KOF 2006, the last 3D installment of the series. Having owned many of the earlier 2D KOF games, there isn’t enough new in XI to make me want to play a ton. At $14.99 though, it’s priced right. Very much looking forward to KOF XII which is supposed to be a total reboot of the 2D series with all new sprites.

The plan for the rest of the year involves mostly going back to finish games I started. I “beat” Mario Galaxy, but didn’t get all 120 stars. I held off on playing through Bioshock a second time on the harder difficulty in anticipation of some DLC and glad the wait has paid off. I really want to finish HL Episode 1 and 2 and maybe complete some more achievements for Portal. I’m probably one or two long sessions away from completing Phantom Hourglass. The mood has sort of passed me, but it would be great to go back and beat Odin Sphere.

I would certainly love to pick up some of the other hot November titles like Uncharted and Rock Band (game only), but there’s no way I’m getting anything new till next year. By then, there should be some great discounts and price reductions. I’ve already done my part in pumping up the game economy with large amounts of day and date purchases this year, so I need to give my wallet a big break for the first half of next year.

MINOR MASS EFFECT SPOILERS FOLLOW
I completed my first game as female/soldier/paragon. Second game decided on male/all biotic/renegade. I’m thinking for the third play through to go back to my female soldier so I can get the level 50 and 60 achievements. I also want to try out an all Tech character too (I’m not big on characters with split specialties). I didn’t get the completionist achievement the first time (finished the game around the 30 hour mark) so debating whether I want to try to explore everything on this renegade play through or wait to till I go back to my soldier.