Concerning Colossi

It has been a fortuitous day, today. Remember that PlayStation 2 I've been chatting about for so long? Well, I was finally able to buy the bloody thing. I got it set up and spent a little under two hours playing Shadow of the Colossus, and the whole business rocks on toast in a serious kind of way. Once I've played a good chunk of Colossus (and potentially beaten it) I'll post a review.

Game reviews are actually something I hope to make a regular part of this blog. I would be utterly content to review games for a living, if it was at all possible. Unfortunately, I suspect that those jobs happen to be extremely competitive. Lots of folk want to write about video games for a living.

In any case, my next post will most likely be a review, though not of Colossus. It will cover another (freeware) game, Dwarf Fortress, that has seized my attention in a very violent way and doesn't seem to want to let it go. I'll never know what precisely makes ASCII games so addictive. I suppose because the graphics are so bloody simple that a lot more time gets spent on the actual game. That makes a kind of sense, really. The game industry ought to be informed.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've a minor domestic crisis to attend to.

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There can only be one...kind of.

...It's Over?

So I took my last final exam as an undergraduate today. ...Last final exam? I think this may be the only case in which that phrase is not actually redundant. Anyway, I was terribly worried about it, mostly because I hadn't really gotten a chance to properly study for it, but it all seems to've turned out all right.

I won't be getting to walk for graduation this evening. I have a show to do, and it would kind of put them in a bad way if I wasn't there. Main character and all that. I'm not especially fussed about it, though. The only thing I'd miss would be the sense of closure I'd get from it. I've been at this malarkey for four years, the absolute least I should get to do is prance around in a dress^H^H^H^H^Hrobe and mortarboard for a bit and have people clap for me. But what can you do?

I'm not sure what I expected, with graduation. What I would've liked was for some sort of Highlander-styled academic Quickening to take place, with lightning jagging down from the sky and infusing my jerking body with the sublime power of a Bachelor of the Arts, but I don't think that Real Life has a budget for special effects. Which is a shame, if you think about it. But I'm not sure what I expected.

I expected to feel rather more accomplished, I guess. Don't misunderstand me, I feel accomplished, just not in any profound sort of way. Mostly I feel tired. The sort of exhaustion you get after finishing a massive project and seeing that hey, maybe you did an all right job with it after all. Which I suppose sums up my feelings about how my undergraduate education went.

I'm not looking forward to being on the low end of the graduate totem pole next fall, though, wherever I wind up at. And I'm going to miss the friends that I've made in this program, of course. There's no guarantee that I'll never see them again, and if I hang around here for my graduate schooling I more than likely will see them, but somehow I'm not sure it'll be the same. There were a lot of people who I really liked, and a few people who I was only just getting to know but whose company I enjoyed, and leaving all that behind (in a sense) is kind of distressing.

On the other hand, escape from undergraduate school means being able to move out, which is a definite plus however you cut it. I'm not sure where I'm moving to or when, but I know that it will most certainly be out. And as part of a sort of package graduation present, my parents have gone ahead and paid for my ordered copy of CthulhuTech, which is most definitely groovy.

Also, with my Saturday paycheck, I'll finally be able to pick up that PlayStation 2. So all in all, life is pretty good, I think. Things'll be a bit confused for a while, but it'll all turn out.

Things usually do.

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Sing from your VAGINA!

A Sign From God

Well, I've been kicking around the idea of buying a used PlayStation 2 for a while now, and I think I've finally seen the sign that now is the time. As I was meandering aimlessly through Target the day before yesterday, I discovered that Shadow of the Colossus, one of those incredibly pretty and artsy games that first put me in mind of buying a PlayStation, had been marked down from twenty dollars to a clearance price of--get this--five bucks. Five friggin' dollars.

I was able to resist while it cost twenty. My will could keep me stalwart in the face of overwhelming pretty (Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) and unrelenting awesome (Kingdom Hearts, God of War, Final Fantasy XII) so long as the cost remained somewhere in the realm of the reasonable. But the siren song has grown strong with this descent into madness, and I'm no Odysseus, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't get a chance to lash myself to the mast. So I bought Colossus today, and now I suppose I must look into actually getting a console to play it on.

I gathered that there were two versions of the PS2: the original and the slimline. The slimline is considerably more expensive, and the only bonus it has seems to be a built in network adapter. A network adapter I'm not likely to use, so I think I'm going to go in for the cheaper, bulkier original model. They both play DVDs, and I figure I'll need summat that will do that. More's the better if I can play video games on it, too.

Well, I guess I know where the next chunk of my last acting paycheck is going.

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What happened to the days when you had to be charming, full of wit in order to woo the lady back to your place for a good banging. Apparently those days are gone.