One more week

As every other time after taking a planned hiatus here, I'm going to extend it one more week. See, I'd do that with my work vacation too, thing is... work. Anyway, it's better to spend my first week back getting reaccustomed to the 9-5 lifestyle than going full bore. Because, thing is, the past two weeks while I was off, I've been SLEEPING from 9am to 5pm (somehow that's my biorhythm. man college (and other post-college uh hobbies) messed me up). 

Anyway, two weeks of nocturnal gaming later, I've actually barely touched the five games I said I'd play (sorry, no Phantasy Star IV). See, I got on this huge Dynasty Warriors kick and clocked almost 35 hours between Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 and Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires, and that was an awesome thing, because I finally get that series. They're real-time strategy / fighting game hybrids, not the generic 3D melee hack-n'-slash action they're so frequently cited as. But more on that later. I was also hindered by Mark of the Ninja being way longer than I thought - where I thought I was two levels from the end, I actually still had six (increasingly difficult - and more interesting!) stages to go. I thought I was almost done a five-hour game, where in fact I was only halfway through a eight-hour one. And that back-end turned what was an interesting stealth/platforming hybrid into a terrifically memorable platformer with far more variety than I ever expected. But more on that later. I barely played Link Between Worlds because my mom gave me Journey to the West for Christmas so my handheld gaming has consisted mostly of reading. Talk about a book that's basically a video game though. But more on that vader. There was also a sale on Xbox On Demand games and Spider-man: Web of Shadows was $5, and I've wanted to play that one since it's been retroactively declared by many fans the pinnacle of Spidey-games, after being dismissed upon initial release as sloppy and half-baked at a time when there were plenty enough Spider-games to go around. It's sloppy and half-baked and has crashed on me far more times than any big-budget major publisher effort ever should, but is full of great ideas and has a faithfully Spider-man feel that elevates it beyond other adaptations. But more on that spider.

Oh right, and I got into this bad habit of trying to beat Stage 6 of Castlevania III every night. I've never been able to beat Stage 6 of Castlevania III, but it really doesn't seem that hard. So I was like, if I just keep trying, I'm sure I'll get through eventually. Around the fifth or sixth night of putting a full hour into failed attempts, I started to lose enthusiasm. 

Non-gaming media pursuits that consumed a great deal of my time included re-watching all six seasons of Larry Sanders (so, so good - definitely a show that doesn't hit you as hard til the second time through, full as it is of tiny character moments and intricate subtext), reading some comics for the first time in years (for some reason I couldn't muster the interest for Guardians of the Galaxy, but I got back into The Amazing Spider-man in no time flat, starting with 2011's "Spider Island" crossover arc), and starting Mobile Suit Gundam, which interested me as I've never seen any '70s (or pre-Akira, really) anime.