malvasia bianca

Today’s game: Shadow of the Colossus. Developed by the same team that did the excellent Ico, and it shows: Liesl immediately commented on the similarity between the two games’ graphical styles, despite being unaware of the connection. The gameplay of the two games is quite different, however. This game consists almost entirely of a series […]

A bit clunkier than I expected, but I’m sure they’ll fix that in a future revision of the hardware. Anyways, interesting differences between the DS and previous Gameboys: Two screens. Bottom screen is touch sensitive. Microphone. Wireless. Wireless is obviously a good idea; ever since the Pokemon games, Gameboys have been about communication, so we […]

I was pretty excited to get Sid Meier’s Pirates!: I’ve spent many a pleasant hour with the various Civilization games, and the reviews talked about how you couldn’t put the game down, how you’d find yourself playing it at two in the morning. The reality wasn’t so great, however. Its resemblance to Civilization was very […]

I bought a Nintendo DS; the triggers were that we’re going on vacation soon, plus the release of the new Mario and Luigi RPG and the new Animal Crossing. We also got a puzzle game called Meteos, which seems decent so far, and which at least uses the input mechanism well.

And now you can see the video games I’ve played recently. There’s still a little bit of refactoring to do on the code that I’ve checked in, and a little bit more code to write. But the previous constructs held up reasonably well; easy enough to add the new item types (video games, game consoles, […]

Anybody have any good podcast recommendations? I’ve been listening to them for a few months now; the only ones that have stuck are agile toolkit, which can be very interesting but which doesn’t get updated very often, and the Mercury News video game podcast, which I enjoy but might well not listen to if I […]

We ♥ Katamari is a sequel to the excellent Katamari Damacy. (I have finally given up and started spelling the second word the same way as its US publisher.) And it is everything that you’d expect from a sequel: quite good, several minor improvements, slightly worse in many ways (largely but not entirely because of […]

Sitting down to play Jade Empire was a very pleasant experience. I’d just given up on a not very satisfactory game. It had been a while since I’d played an RPG, so I was primed for the experience. I selected a character without too much agonizing, entered the initial area, talked to a few people, […]

I didn’t play any of the Resident Evil games during the last generation. That was probably mostly because I didn’t have a Playstation back then; eventually, RE2 came out for the Nintendo 64, but it didn’t make enough of an impact for me to want to buy it. Also, the genre didn’t excite me too […]

I bought Battalion Wars for the Gamecube a month or so ago. Even as I bought it, I was thinking “why am I buying this when I have Jade Empire waiting to be played?” (Answer: I cut Gamecube games way too much slack.) Anyways, I gave it a try. It’s a sort of RTS, which […]

I finally bought an Xbox a few months ago. One thing it does right: it has a general console settings screen where I can tell it what my audio and video capabilities are. It’s just silly that I have to tell every Gamecube game “yes, I want surround sound; yes, I want progressive scan”. If […]

Fortunately, the pneumonia drugs are working nicely. Compared to my dim memories of what I normally feel like, I’m still probably not doing too hot, but compared to the recent past, I feel great. So: back to our normal subject matter. Today: Shenmue II. The second part of a three-part series telling the story of […]

I just watched the first episode of This Spartan Life. I’m pretty sure that my liking it wasn’t solely a byproduct of the fever-ridden state of my brain.

A while back, I wondered if I’d ever buy another GBA game, and decided that the answer was probably no. Which would have been correct based solely on the quality of upcoming games for various systems, but I couldn’t exactly bring my copy of Resident Evil 4 on vacation. (Well, I suppose I could have […]

When I first heard about the Nintendo DS, I thought it was a gimmick. And I still think it’s a gimmick, though one that’s doing surprisingly well: the system is consistently outselling the PSP in Japan, for example. (No idea how they’re doing in the US.) Part of that is due to cultural differences: some […]

Gran Turismo 4 is the first of that storied series that I’ve played. It’s almost the only driving game that I’ve played this generation (the exceptions being the forgettable F-Zero GX and a few rounds of Mario Kart with friends): I got pretty burned out on driving games last generation, and I needed some time […]

It’s been a while since I discussed a video game I’ve finished, hasn’t it? Not because I haven’t been finishing games, I’ve just been busy writing about other things. (The video games du jour are Shenmue II, on my new Xbox (about which more later), when Miranda is around, and the stunning Resident Evil 4, […]

As threatened earlier, I’ve started to work Dance Dance Revolution (the specific version I have is DDRMAX, just for the record) into my exercise routine. I do it on days when either the weather is such that I’d rather not jog, or when I’m recovering from a cold and don’t feel like jogging but don’t […]

The upcoming game that I’m most excited about is Spore. It’s by Will Wright, the guy who did Sim City and The Sims, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Or rather, I’ve seen tons of things like parts of it, but nothing that puts its all together the way that this game is trying […]

I’ve finally finished Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, only five months after starting it. It would have gone a lot faster if I could have played it while Miranda was watching, obviously, but it is a pretty long game. I don’t have a lot to add to my earlier comments. I said back then that […]