Not Feelin' It

No TWEWY
I'm making some changes with my sleep schedule. And Day 6 of The World Ends With You was pretty disappointing, so I'm not going to be playing today. Some days I just don't feel like playing. Plus the down side of keeping a game journal is that I have to be up for both playing the game and writing about it. This is why I will most likely never be a proper game reviewer, since if they get bored with a game, they often still have to play it through to the end as fast as possible and write a thoughtful, insightful, fair review when they're done. Forget that!

Heroes
I spent a little time checking out the Heroes game on facebook. It's definitely more engaging than Mouse Hunt, as I have to check in more than once a day to level efficiently. I'm sure it becomes a pointless grind fairly quickly. But the highest level friend on my list is level 22. I made it to level 15 in a day, so I think I'll at least pass him up before calling it quits. Also, fighting in the game sucks because kill stealing isn't just allowed, it's a preferred grinding method. Higher level characters with AoE (area of effect) attacks come into lowbie (low level) areas and kill four or five enemies with one shot. Sometimes I was lucky to get credit for one in four of the enemies I engaged in battle. What a pain. And how sad a design mistake. I always remember the quote from GDC past where someone said the social network people are learning gaming so quickly, yet here's a design failing that went out with World of Warcraft almost four years ago. And seriously, if you're not stealing from WoW, what business do you have in the MMO space? The dev log says they're working on "instanced" content for a future patch. I'm pretty sure I'll be done with the game well before then.

PAX
I'm keeping tabs on the PA boards in preparation for PAX. I kind of feel that I'm all set, though. I suppose I could pack things up super early. But that seems way too organized for me. Well, maybe that's not the word. I have a spreadsheet listing all the panels I want to attend and highlighting all the free time I can spend in the exhibition hall just to make sure I remember to cover everything. But being organized doesn't mean I enjoy packing.

I thought of getting an audio recorder to record impressions from the show floor, but unannotated audio is fail. On Gametrailers TV they have index markers so I can skip to the section I want to see. Why doesn't every single audio and video player have that feature at this point? Heck, some of the early Giant Bomb videos allowed users to add notes to specific points in the video on the fly. They were mostly just jokes, but still. Annotated audio and video are the only way to go if you want to let users get to the content they're interested in directly. And since none of these podcasts are selling ads, why wouldn't they want users to jump right to the stuff they want? Even if they were, they could just put the ads at the start of each section.

I'm not planning on hitting up the musical performances this year. I'd much rather spend my time in the console freeplay areas, socializing or checking out games I haven't gotten a chance to play because I'm so inflexible that I can't bring myself to pay more than the launch price of the PS2 for a console.

Media Consumption
I've also been exploring some other blogs and podcasts. The Brainy Gamer is definitely a standout. For the most part, though, there's only so much I can read of other people's opinions. Part of that is because I read so much news and opinion already. Part of that is because these are mostly old, closed discussions, making them feel irrelevant. Part of it is because I like the stuff I read to have a point to make and make it. Most blogs, including mine, like to give a lot of context and background and tell stories. Nuts to that! :P

And now, time for sleep.