journal for 2003-06-01
games
I’ve gone back to a lot of the GBA games that I’d put aside, and I feel pretty stuck in all of them. Most of them are ports of SNES games and are (therefore, I’d say) pretty linear. In other words, I’m stuck and there’s nothing to do but try to beat the same part over and over and over again. For what it’s worth, I haven’t done much guide-consulting, so maybe once I do things will get easier. At least I might figure out how to hurt the current boss in Link to the Past.
I was very tempted to pick up Wario Ware yesterday, especially after playing it in line for a little bit. It sounded way fun, and when played it seemed like it, too. It seems, in fact, like a game where “getting stuck” isn’t really possible. Of course, given that I played it for ten mintues, at the most, it’s hard to say.
Instead, I picked up Chessmaster for the PS2. It’s a little odd in its interface, although as mdxi noted, you can only make a chess interface so weird before it stops being a chess game. Chessmaster is certainly still a chess game. In time, I might stop thinking the interface is weird at all, and that would OK with me.
At some level inside my brain, I want to be a Chess Person. I want to say, “Oh, he’s using the Sicilian Defense,” and understand not just that it’s ..c5, but also understand its implications and likely follow-ups. Last night, Chessmaster mated me in around 15 moves. Granted, I have no idea what level of difficulty was set. It strikes me, though, that I don’t think I’ll ever be great at arcade or video games. I’ve gotten to be better than casual players, but I’ll never be a pro, and I doubt I’ll ever even win local tournaments. Heck, I rarely play my games set to hard. I can accept that: I don’t have the reflexes for video game mastry. Chess requries brainpower, which I like to think I have. Playing chess, though, is frustratingly humbling. I need to learn to concentrate and commit to things like chess.
Of course, I’d swap chess out of the above paragraph in favor of go, without hesitation, if it was easier to find console go games and real life go players. For some reason, I’m never super-interested in playing on the network servers.
int-fiction
Did I ever mention that I finished Enchanter? I did. I started the sequel, Sorcerer, but then switched to Trinity, and then stopped playing both. Now I’m trying to play some recently-released games so that I can contribute to discussion of them on rec.games.int-fiction. I played Cross of Fire, which was disappointing. Now I’m playing Inevitable, which I’m enjoying quite a bit. It uses the REMEMBER verb, which I generally don’t like, but it’s alright, here.
I’ve had some ideas and made some progress on Coronation Day. I need to get in gear so I can finish it. I know just what I want to do, but I need to do it. Sometimes, when I start to actually do work on it, I get so caught up in the details that I spend three hours implementing one little thing. While that’s fun as heck, it means that I haven’t really made progress into the story. I don’t know if the best idea is to build a framework and then build details, or build things comlpetely one at a time and then go on to the next thing.
At any rate, I think this could be quite a fun game, if I get it done.
Oh, I recently played Tales of the Kissing Bandit. It was good clean fun, and I liked it.
food
The Greek food festival over at St. Nicholas’ Church was this weekend. Yesterday, Gloria and I went by shortly after it opened (around 1100) and picked up two pieces of baklava and a piece of ambrourgo. I think I’ve got the name of that second thing right, anyway; it was like a moist yellow-and-chocolate cake with a very thick, almost candylike, frosting. It was darn good. Even better, of course, was the baklava. The pieces were huge! Each was a triangle, about four inches on the base and two inches high—and two and a half inches thick! And they were only two bucks each! It was awesome. Baklava is, like, the best pastry ever. Of course, I’m going to be OK having none for at least a while, now. I think maybe it’s good that I don’t eat it often, or I might get sick of it. As it is, it rules.
We ate at Tulum again on Friday, which was good, too. We got the same things we’d had last time (a beef taco and a Mayan burrito) but we got nachoes instead of wings. I think the wings were better, but the nachoes were good, except for the so-so dipping sauce. Next time, maybe chips and salsa. We’re going to go there when John and Bryan are up, I reckon.
itching
I don’t know what is going on with my itchiness. It’s crazy and sucky.
My poison ivy is nearly done with. It’s been dry for quite some time now, and I’m just waiting for its scabbiness to be done. There’s some itching around it, but it’s pretty low-grade.
The rest of my body itches like hell. I’ve found little bug bites here and there, especially (this sucks) on the fingers of my right hand. There are also some on my right elbow and my shins. I hope they’re from cycling, but the might be from mosquitoes in our apartment. I haven’t seen any in a while, but there was a very hard-to-kill one flying around for two days or so, last week. I’ve wondered if it didn’t come back from the grave to avenge itself.