welcome. everything I write here is something I felt to be important to some degree; game reviews, life updates/vents, and philosophical musings. I do my best to make my statements truthful. everyone is welcome to post comments, provided they are relevant.

9.21.2004

Culling the herd

My PS2 collection depresses me. It must be cleansed.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
Alter Echo
MDK2 Armageddon
Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex
Haven: Call of the King
I-Ninja
Devil May Cry
Enter the Matrix
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
Dark Cloud
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
Armored Core 2
Kinetica
State of Emergency

I think I mentioned that I bought a new used PS2 because mine was an older model with disc read problems that can't really be fixed. It came with ATV Offroad Fury 2, but it didn't survive its previous owner and won't load.

9.20.2004

it's a fucking catastrophe.

I can't bring myself to load about 80% of my playstation games, for the simple purpose of playing them. the RPGs take too much planning, the action games take too much trial and error (aside from my plain sucking), and the platform games are all completed with the exception of the lame parts like time attacks, or anything less than perfect means failure in a single run. i look at the titles, and i see work instead of entertainment.

DAMN YOU, WORLD OF WARCRAFT STRESS TEST!!!!

9.07.2004

I've recently been told that EB is full of hot air. either way, those games are a disgrace to my game collection and must be removed one way or another. besides, their website only excludes state of emergency for trade-ins. if i have to trade in the other four, so be it.

but a bit of extra price research would be prudent.

9.06.2004

too tired to bother fixing typos, so don't correct me unless it's for improper use of a word or phrase. and send me an e-mail - I won't see/remember any IRC messages
So I saw at electronics boutique that i can trade 3 games for GTA San Andreas (it was a PS2 box, so i assume it's like-for-like or something) and after a brief look at my collection, 5 titles stand out:

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
this was a decent enough game - FOR A N00B. not only is it ridiculously easy, it's ridiculous entirely. you play a tasmanian tiger who uses boomerangs as a weapon, which is not itself entirely ridiculous, considering the inevitable ridiculousness of the game... it's the ridiculous variety of boomerangs you can have that get to me. all the characters have an australian accent and the lingo to go with it, which is a nice touch. probably the only nice touch though. can you believe this is an EA game?

you just know I can go on about any one of these games, so i'll try to keep them short. ish.

State of Emergency
This was mostly about breaking stuff. Or so i thought. aside from that one redeeming quality, missions involve protecting individuals too stupid to cover their own asses (like yourself), usually against a plethora of enemies with alot more firepower than you and some suicide bombers. the music selection on the PS2 is lacking, which i realise because i first played it on an xbox with some trebble charger like stuff playing which made it that much more kick ass. of course there are codes, but in the end it doesn't really matter because there's nothing else to do.

Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
this is one of the first games i bought, influenced by the Gauntlet game I played on N64. This one has twice the fun and is more like the arcade, or so i'm told. but I don't listen to half of what the guy who told me tells me because about that much of it is hot air. sometimes it's not, so i have to listen to the whole thing or else suffer grife about how i don't listen to him. ANYWAY, it's very basic move around kill hordes of monsters with your silly and inexplicable (with exceptions) ranged attacks and kill bosses unlock levels and stuff. highly repeatitive, but unique classic none-the-less.

Dark Cloud
this is in fact the first game i bought for my PS2. I was lured by the cover thinking it might be like the legends of zelda for the console I don't have. I was, as i discovered, painfully wrong. from what i can tell, it's an early attempt at adventure-rpg, excepth that the weapons get the power upgrades and your vitality is determined by how many hidden gold apples and snacks you eat. well, it was endurable, it had its perks and quirks, but when i try to pick it up where i left off (after beating the game where a new dungeon with more levels than the story has filled with monsters who kill whenever they twitch) I just don't understand how i could have put up with it. especially since Dark Cloud 2 is so much better. but that has its flaws too, believe you me.

Devil May Cry
what can I say? it's an action game, which has never been my bag of tricks. i can beat this game with Easy-Auto, but from what I hear the real fun is in normal. However, the bosses seem to have more fun than me, what with my ass getting burned on the first boss. I could probably get the hang of it eventually, but I have so many other unfinished games that I hope to "get the hang of" and this one is at the bottom of the waiting list. and it's old.

well, if anyone feels that i should Not depart with one of these classic pieces of compact disc, let me know before I decide your opinions don't actually matter. well, they don't, but i'm giving the few people in the area who deign to read my website a chance to salvage their own piece of past PS2 posterity. everyone else can kiss my posterior, unless they have $15 canadian +s&h for me.