It's Not You, It's Me

I hadn't planned on not posting yesterday. I also hadn't planned on getting sucked into Ratchet and Clank on the PSP for an hour and a half, but I did, so I didn't post. By the time I got to a viable continue point, I was not in a place of coherence. It happens. This version of R&C is a little on the short side, especially considering that I'm not one to play through again to power up weapons and collect doo-dads and what not, but even with its brevity, it's a fun game and a dead on recreation of R&C for a portable. To be able to reproduce a full on console experience on something you can play on the bus, minus a few buttons on the controller, is an amazing thing. On the DS, you certainly have your fair share of great games, but no one is going to mistake Metroid Prime: Hunters with any of the Prime games on either the GameCube or the Wii. I'm sorry if PSP owners are saying "well, duh" right now, but you have to understand that when I originally bought a PSP it would take roughly 37 galactic cycles to load up one hole in Tiger Woods. I never managed to stay awake to see the graphical output.

I am continuing to make progress in Mass Effect at the expense of progress in Rock Band. I was so excited to buy the two All-American Rejects songs on Christmas day that I promptly proceeded to not play them. Based on the last achievement I just got in Mass Effect I am roughly 75% done with the game and I'm sitting on enough money to buy my own solar system so there's no real reason to go off and do side missions other than to gain experience and make my squad even more of an unstoppable killing machine. That's enough of an incentive for me as I wish us to be so powerful that enemies die once we walk into the room, so futile would their efforts be to oppose us.

The fact that I'm so wrapped up in the game despite it's many, many faults speaks to how engrossing it is. Either that or the game has no faults and instead my grievances are nothing more than the manifestation of my inability to like anything. I'll let you decide as at this point you have spent enough time with me to effectively call bullshit.

Finally, we watched the first three episodes of the new animated Transformers season and while I loved every minute of it, the wife declared that it "was not her thing". I expected as much going into it, however when she actually watched the whole thing rather than retreating to the confines of her Oprah magazine, I thought that maybe she was actually amused. I was wrong. The show certainly has some faults, but overall, I think it's done fairly well. I'm not sure how well the Autobots as superheroes angle will work, but at the same time, I can see how they writers would yearn for the creative freedom of not having to have their story's main characters constantly hiding from the show's residents. Also, the lack of Peter Cullen's voice is grating, despite the quality voice work in the show. I'm sure he'll show up at some point, just as Adam West portrayed the Grey Ghost in an episode of Batman: The Animated series. And, just as in the case of Mr. West, Cullen's soothing tones will be like a trip back in time, to when feety pajamas were the fashion of the day, and a bowl of cereal was an acceptable dinner.