blakerson.com

It's been a heavy season for video games, so here's the latest batch I've been playing, each with as complex and fulfilling a statement I can get out of two lines of text.

Mirror's Edge
Idiot savant game design. Savant for the revolution in gaming's most basic mechanism (platforms), idiot for combat control so bad it questions mental capacities.

Metal Gear Solid 4
[this line doesn't count: I'm behind the times, but I waited to get back to the US to play the English version.]
Amazing. Poignant, emotional, humorous, difficult, relentlessly hardcore, and an amazing conclusion to the consistently best series in all of gaming.

Quantum of Solace
A true successor to Goldeneye: an ambitious Bond game that forgets current standards for control or narrative in shooting games. A mediocre game, but appreciably so.

LittleBigPlanet
Based on 5 minutes with the beta: more charming than a Pixar movie. Online content creation may be very cool with time, but enjoy the game on the disc with a friend now.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
Exactly what a sequel for Geometry Wars should be. More options, more connectivity, and more colorfulness without changing the core game. Grab it.

Left 4 Dead
A 4-player co-op zombie apocalypse. Play it once, then get hooked on Versus re-playing against your friends, who are the zombies.

Rock Band 2
Remember the first time you tried Guitar Hero, and it was every bit as cool as you thought it would be? It's that feeling all over again.

Street Fighter IV
The gorgeous, deep, hardcore revival that Street Fighter II has always deserved. Fighting games are back, baby.

For a post with a name like that, four weeks before the election, you'd think it's political.

But it's not.

It's an invitation for you to join me doing stuff! I'm trying to grow some roots in Dallas, now that I'm living here full-time, and it's got me going in several different directions at once.

First off, I'm taking my running a little more seriously now that I'm back. I've been at it for a year now - I started in Japan because the air was clean and I was really bored. Since I've been back, I decided to invest a little money into my activity and get into Nike+. I got the shoes, the iPod, the chip, the whole deal. And as a gamer, it's a riot to track my stats all the time - you're basically trying to beat your own high score every time you go run, and it's good for you. Here, have a widget with my stuff:

Feel free to berate me or encourage me.

If you're feeling a little more indoorsy, then join me in building stuff! I got into the LittleBigPlanet beta, which is an awesome co-op platformer game for the PlayStation 3 where you can build your own levels. If you're a girl, bug your guy friends or boyfriend - the little character in the game is really cute. If you have a PlayStation 3, add 'blakerson' as your friend and we'll play together.

In other news, I'm thinking on starting a regular 'game night' at my house where people meet up and just play whatever's on tap. If you're in the DFW area and still reading this puppy, let me know. You're invited.

Update: I forgot one! If you'll be playing any PC games this holiday season, be sure to join the group on Steam. Or, if you're not part of my old high-school crew, just add me as your friend.

I'm really trying to avoid being one of those people who graduates from school and decides they've "grown out" of writing their own stuff. It's one thing to get too busy to do it, but 90% of people who shut down their accounts on Xanga/Blogger/Wordpress/etc. do it out of lack of interest.

Weak sauce, I say. If you want to bring down the number of entries, great, but I think few people have compelling enough reasons to stop being as expressive as they were before. It's cool that newer outlets are making people *more* expressive, too: my brother was never publicly read until he started writing Facebook notes and in just a few entries he's shown himself to be sophisticated, funny, and stylistically very talented. His stuff just screams "diamond in the rough," as if those same parts of his brain got used towards being a musician instead of honing his writing style.

I, on the other hand, have no excuse other than a job situation which is OK with me *reading* anything on a computer, but frowns upon me being communicative or expressive on work time, because that's a giveaway that I'm doing "private things" at work as far as my Japanese superiors are concerned. That alone makes me look forward to getting an American job in a certain respect.

Moral of the story: this blog ain't dead, and while I'm a bit short on epiphanies these days, I'm challenging myself to step up and be interesting.

So, in an homage to my older blogging days, here's what I'm consuming, and maybe you should be too:

What I'm listening to
Lots of hip-hop at the moment. In the last year we've had new albums from Common, Talib Kweli, and Lupe Fiasco, and they're collectively a bit darker, a bit funkier, a bit more grittier than their respective earlier records. But they're all good, so go get them.

What I'm reading
Wired.com is the best reading material I've come across in a while. It's a great mix of internet culture, tech news, and Silicon Valley Doings that's all written by a pretty accomplished collection of contributors. I especially recommend the Autopia, Gadget Lab, and Threat Level blogs within the site, and the online postings of magazine features each month.

What I'm playing
My game habits are thrown out of whack, since my multiplayer abilities are limited out here. If I were in the States, it'd be solid Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But instead, my Japanese Wii looks forlorn as I give more attention to my PS3 (and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue), and even more to my Xbox 360 (Halo 3 is still the multiplayer king). I'm looking forward to getting home so I can catch up on a lot of co-operative games and throw a gaming party or two.

In the meantime, I'm getting some rare single-player quality time. I finally finished the Halo 3 campaign. Call of Duty 4 was the best game of last year. Super Mario Galaxy is a 9 out of 10 - a massive improvement in recent Mario years, but it still doesn't outdo Super Mario 64.

Also, I did something I never do: I preordered a game. Grand Theft Auto 4, the American version, is to be delivered to my doorstep sometime in the near-ish future. I'm going to be massively sucked in.

Where I'm going
Mom's coming to visit me in Japan! It's going to be a whirlwind week and a half covering Tokyo and Kyoto, and long story short we'll basically be seeing everything that you can catch a glimpse of in Lost in Translation. We're even staying in the same hotel. At first, I was unspeakably excited about living like a rockstar with Mom for the trip. She hasn't had a vacation in something like 15 years, so it's all 5-star hotels and first-class tickets. If you know my mom, you get what's going on here. Then it hit me that it's pathetic to be excited for stuff that my mom's money is buying, and I should be much more excited that it's Mom and she's coming to see me. And I have gotten excited about it. I'm happy to be really sharing Japan with someone for once. Konnichiwhoa might be interesting to read once in a while, and the pictures might be cool, but it's a world apart from constantly having to explain things you see on the street, explaining random cultural idiosyncracies, translate everything from ads to restaurant menus to what shopkeepers say. And out of all the people who've had to put up with my Japan fascination, she's had to bear more of it than anyone - she paid for my degree in Japanese, and I had to fight for that. It's going to be an awesome, fun-filled, classy week and a half.

Dear friends, I've had a musical conundrum for a while:

I've been contemplating wiping my mp3 folder. Just taking a small handful of albums that are very near and dear to me, and killing off the rest.

That operation will have to go on hold, because The Avalanches are back.

Finally. After like a 6 year wait.

Apparently they're posting their live sets and some new tracks (which are always amazing; they have the best mixing around) over on theavalanches.com, so go grab those.

It's going to be a good year after all!

It feels nice, if I'm a bit jetlagged. The flight back the States was about as easy as an 11-hour flight can be. And what a surprise, I ate a whole pizza, a whole order of On the Border fajitas, and spent the whole day on a computer.

I only miss Japan a little bit. It's not the huge relief to get home as it was from Spain, mostly because I know that I'll be back to Japan many more times in my life.

Since jetlag has my sleep cycle reversed by 12 hours, I stayed up all night online, mostly playing the Flash-based Elemental TD online. It's not quite the same without having John and Thomas and Max on your team, but it does go a long way to satisfy cravings. Anyway, I have some catching up on gaming to do, so here's what I want to do, and you guys are invited:

-Splinter Cell: Double Agent multiplayer/coop
-WarioWare - the Wii version comes out this week and it even has 12-player party modes! I'm so throwing a party for that.
-Hamachi night to get our War3 on - TD seems to be having a renaissance on the forums, so we might be able to find some new maps.
-CS:Source - My replacement video card is showing up any day now. An Lee and I are thinking about throwing together an Austin-based clan to play a season in cal-o. Anyone interested?

Who's in? :D