I’m finished!
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
Contrary to Paul Dano’s situation pictured above, today is a pretty auspicious day for my brain. Remember how I’ve been plugging away at Picross DS for the last year? Well, I closed the lid on that one; all 400-something puzzles have been solved. Nintendo and Jupiter packed in what amounted to literally hundreds of hours of brain-straining pictures to puzzle out, and yet I find myself lusting for more content, just mere days after I polished off the last picture-puzzle. (It was a DS Lite, which revealed itself to me in a moment so surreal — I was holding one of the damn things, after all! — that I felt sure I was losing my grip on this reality in favor of a two-dimensional, numbers-based one.) In a decidedly non-Nintendo move, Picross DS supports downloadable puzzles from previous Picross games as well as brand-new puzzles every couple weeks; however, I managed to run through most of them within a couple hours. 10×10 grids ain’t got nothin’ on the dozens of 25×20 behemoths I’m solving in my sleep.
In any case, while my friends and family wait with bated breath for my nervous, twitchy Picross withdrawals to pass, I dove headfirst into Braid. I mean that quite seriously; I played the game to completion in one protracted (four-hour!) sitting, from innocuous introduction to mind-fucking conclusion.
Seriously, you need to play this game.
The last time I sat in one place for four hours straight was when I was staring down the long, cold barrel of my honors college thesis deadline. The few times before that were likely either related to last-minute final essays or malevolent stomach virii.
So! With those titles out of the way, I can look forward to:
- Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune: The prettiest game I’ve ever laid my tender eyes on. It’s shaping up to be a great rental.
- Bionic Commando Re-Armed: A love letter to one of the greatest NES games ever made. Fun fact: The original Japanese version was called Top Secret: Hitler’s Revival, and was the second best Hitler-killing game ever made. Hitler’s about as fundamental a villain in human existence as any, but a Hitler with chain-gun arms? You simply can’t top that.
- Doing Something with My Life: Despite my efforts hire I think this me one’s still hire out of me reach for the please hire me time being.
That’s all for now. Have fun, kids.