journal for 2003-04-09
anniversary
Yesterday was our third anniversary, and I dare say it went quite well!
We hung out and reversed roles: Gloria played Nintendo while I supported her by sleeping on the sofa. (It was good.) We went to Apollo and I had a really awesome lamb shank. (Gloria was less enthusiastic about her tuna, sadly.)
We went home, and gave each other stuff. I gave her things that smell good and some clothing-related items. I think most of that went over well, and that which needs to be exchanged for similar things can be, AFAIK.
She gave me a sweet new Tux polo shirt and an XBox.
the xbox
So, yeah. I’d done a lot of hemming and hawing to the effect of, “I will never, ever get an XBox.” Gloria said, “Well, technically you didn’t get it, it was given to you.” Sure, but that’s not the point I want to clear up, here.
For one thing, I will stand by my statement that the XBox is a stupid system. It’s got a crummy design, crummy implementation, and crummy image and marketing. (The last, granted, is not system-related.) Consider the order in which I got consoles of this generation: GCN, DC, PS2, (XBox).
The problem is that there are some XBox exclusive games that I really want. I have the first one, as it came with the system: Jet Set Radio Future. It’s a good sequel to JSR, which was a super duper game. The most important of the others I will likely obtain PDQ: Steel Battalion. It’s a mech sim that comes with a gigantic controller and pedals. In my mind, I think of the XBox (when I’m not thinking of it as MS’s goofy attempt to make a console) as a device for playing Steel Battalion, which happens to be capable of playing other games, also.
My brief review, so far is: This thing is freaking huge and heavy. Its system menus are interesting, but kind of dumb. The fact that I can save to an internal hard drive is really nice. The controller (I have the S controller) is badly designed. If it was going to be that big, it should’ve been designed to fit in a stack of AV equipment. Yay, I can play JSRF!
work and programming
I think I’m getting out of my recent rut at work. Time will tell.
There’s a comp to write a “swashbuckling” game. I think I’ll enter.