A savePoint at storpi.com

"Oh, it’s end of April, but it’s supposed to snow today.  Well, if it’s snow, I won’t need an umbrella.  I’ll just wear a hat.  That’ll be enough." - me, this morning before work.

Well, not only is it not snowing.  It’s raining, and to top it off, we’ve also got hail.  BB pellet hail.  Too bad I have a Halo hat, not a helmet. 

Guess I won’t be getting GTA IV tonight at the midnight launch.  Guess tomorrow’s another day.  Another day on which I have to work till 9:00pm.  Gah!

Well, the main point of this post is to try out some of the features on the new Windows Live Writer blogging application.  So far?  I’m pretty impressed, and I hope that this does away with a lot of the nuisances of blogging and get me back here more often.

Next stop?  A spiffier layout.

Jackie Chan and Jet Li in a movie together? How come no one thought of this before?

The Forbidden Kingdom, trailer in previous post, features the aforementioned martial arts, movie stars and the guy who put together the fight scenes from the Matrix, so it looks like it’ll be a pretty cool action flick. Mixing Jackie Chan’s style of kung fu comedy with Jet Li’s serious skills should yield some interesting results.  I’m excited.  The story is something about a kid from our time looking for pirated DVDs, getting sucked into the mystical Chinese past, and having to learn kung fu to free the Monkey King and save the world. Hm.

As I said, it looks like it’ll be a pretty cool action flick.

The Forbidden Kingdom comes out April 18th. Video game adaption to be announced.

Or not.

(more…)

Anyways, speaking of typing, here’s my idea for a PSP keyboard: take the clear plastic one they showed originally, only instead of having it on top of the system, overlay it on the screen, effectively making a touchscreen. Then, only have the keys show up when text input is called up. Easier typing, and you keep the PSP form factor.

Well, more like 1:15, so I thought I’d post in the blog. Couple of cool things going on here: there’s actually free wireless internet access at the new Milwaukee Greyhound / Amtrak station, making my two hour layover that much more interesting. I also picked up the higher capacity PSP battery over the weekend, so I have my screen brightness turned up `cause I’m not too worried about the system dying as I “type.” Which would suck.

This past two months have been, perhaps, the most productive gaming months I’ve ever had, seeing the completion of six games: Bioshock, Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Halo 3, and Saints Row. It got me thinking that it might be cool to have progress bars on my blog to show a percentage of how far I am into the games I’m currently playing. Trouble is, how will I know how close I am to finishing so that I can figure out a percentage? Next games up though, probably Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Metroid Prime 3. That’s a lot to get through before the end of the month, and I haven’t even opened half of these.

While it’s only October (and still pretty warm, until today…) the holiday season is practically upon us. This month’ll see the releases of many pretty anticipated titles. We already got Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, (well, not me. More on that later), Folklore comes out tomorrow, and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction comes in at the end of the month. Some other titles I’m looking forward to: The Simpsons Game and Clive Barker’s Jericho.

Those last two are probably a bit off the radar for most people, one being licensed and the other being just another shooter in the post Halo 3 era of really awesome multiplayer features. They were certainly off my radar until I played the demos that were released on PSN. The Simpsons Game was actually pretty solid and the humor that they’ve got is appropriately and unmistakably Simpsons brand. I’m seeing a lot of people giving the demo fives out of ten, which I suspect come from the “Everyone’s a Critic”- mentality, but if you’re a Simpsons fan, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

The Jericho demo was pretty short and didn’t really let me get a good feel for what the game would be like. There is this really neat timed button presses / interactive cutscene near the end in which a hideous monster plops down on top of you and you have to hit the right buttons to block his attacks and knock him off. I think that part is probably the best indicator for the mood of the game. You can sense the fear and anexiety in your character, something that could so easily have been lost given how heavily armed your seven man team is. I think I’ll probably rent this one first to see if I can get into it.

Hey, been a while since I wrote.  I’ve been working on a number of different things the past couple of weeks.  One of the most exciting has been my entry into the Unlock XBOX game concept design contest from Doritos and Microsoft.  I’ve finally gotten my idea submitted and you guys can check it out here.  Personally, I think it’d be a really fun game, but that’s not too surprising.  My greatest worry, though is that I didn’t explain it clearly enough.  Looks like I’ll have to wait till August 20th to find out.  Not too long.

In the mean time, I still have Super Stardust HD to play (now up to 78 million points!  100 million, here I come!).  The Heavenly Sword demo is really awesome, if you don’t mash the buttons, which will get it done, but it won’t look as cool.  Just yesterday, I missed the last “square” on the run over to the tower so I could fight the tougher axe guy and perfectly countered his orange attack in R1 power stance, taking him out in one blow.  It was cool.

Also on the menu, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, yet to be opened, Tomb Raider Anniversary, ditto, and Odin’s Sphere, long, yet to be finished.  Plus, Lair will be out before then, and my girlfriend just bought me a Wii for my birthday (THANK YOU!!  Other than that, speechless).  Not really sure what to do with it, the Wii, seeing as I didn’t plan to have all three consoles so early in the current gen…  At least I’m ready for Smash Bros.