20061028

guess how i did at state champs!

Round 1: He has Zur the Enchanter, Confiscate, and Copy Enchantment. Black cannot kill enchantments.

Round 2: He has 3 Call of the Herds in his opening hand. The next game, he has Stormbind. Black cannot deal with six elephants. It also cannot kill enchantments.

Round 3: R/W Storm is not a very good deck. I win!

Round 4: Creatureless Rack + discard is not a very good deck. I win!

Round 5: It's a mirror match, but I play stupidly.

Round 6: "Gain 4 life" is not fun for an aggro deck to hear in Standard. Also, black cannot kill Paladin en-Vec.

I drop.

20061025

rpg status update

While I have the 2nd act written, i need to script the action sequences, which is harder than you'd expect because I'd like to make them actually interesting. That's hard to do in turn-based combat. I also want to do little stories for what happens to the characters in the year between, but I have those about half done. Oh, and I need to make the 3rd act interesting. It could be much better. But these things will hopefully be done one day, and then maybe sometime Bryan and Young will start calling me back, and then we can play. Maybe.

20061018

some things

It's pretty much officially autumn now - the leaves are dying, the crows are out in droves, and there's cold in the air. This is pretty much my favorite season, but it's too bad I don't really have anything to do on Halloween.


A quote from Jen Graves, Stranger art critic and guest speaker in my Contemporary Art class: "Richard Serra has stopped throwing molten lead."


Games I've been playing reviewed alongside girls from my classes:

Jade Empire: This game is very Americanized Chinese. I mean, ornithopers? Scantily-clad women? Come on. It's too bad the combat kind of sucks, too. Other than that, it's very very pretty and Bioware is still good at characterization. Although there isn't a single female character that I care about in the game, so it sucks being a male character.

Angela: A Chinese girl in my Japanese class who is cheerful and somewhat interesting. We have similar taste in cute things. Facebook tells me she is a conservative Christian.

Chrono Cross: The bad thing about hard bosses in RPGs is that, if you lose, you can't learn how to beat the boss like you could in an action game. No, you have to make your characters stronger. I don't like that.
I stumbled upon a ruined futuristic city, and I was all thinking "Wait, this is going to be another Miyazaki ripoff like FFX now, isn't it? Technology is evil and all that." But then the futuristic city turned out to actually be from the future. Bravo, Chrono Cross. I applaud your ingenuity.

Sarah: I'm just going to put an 'H' on her name because I don't know how she spells it. She's from my Native American Art History class and I pretty much like her. She's pretty cute, bright, and interesting, although I wish I knew more about her. She likes anime, I guess, and is a better artist than I am, although that's pretty much true of everybody. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't seem to have a lot of free time, but I think she might have my phone number. Not that she's called me, mind.

Time Spiral: This is a pretty fun set. The best part about the timeshifted cards is that I keep forgetting what's in them. It's like a surprise every time!

Nat: Another name I'm not sure how to spell. She's Sarah's friend, with a pretty nice dry wit. We seem to end up talking about slash fiction more than seems logical.

Dead Rising: This game is pretty much the most fun I can think of having on the Xbox 360. Beating zombies is fun. Beating zombies with pretty much anything you can find is even more fun. Taking pictures of them afterwards is pretty much the greatest.

Swan: She makes her own jewelry for a living and she's extremely friendly. She lives in Beacon Hill and it's too bad that she has a boyfriend. Oh well. She's from my Contemporary Art class.

Just Cause: I haven't actually played this game, but seeing how it's Grand Theft Auto meets CIA-sponsored regime change, with parachutes and grappling hooks, it's pretty fun to watch. Stealing helicopters in midair is excellent.

Nabe: A communications exchange student from Seoul, in my Contemporary Art class. Her English isn't necessarily the best, but she's really friendly. And she apparently lives in my building, five floors up. But she has a boyfriend too, of course.

Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Sticking it to the Man is fun. Spraying grafitti is fun. I just wish it were a better game.


Also: I've decided to update weekly now. Tell your friends! And be sure to punch me when I don't update.