Ty’s Weblog

Just wanted to take a moment to wish you a Happy Summer Solstice

Cal Ripken has announced that he is going to retire at the end of the 2001 season. I, for one, will miss him, but I’m glad that he’s leaving the game just like he’s always played it, with style and class.

Got myself a little clip on light for my Gameboy Advance. It makes a world of difference. Of course this means that my batteries are being sucked down faster. We’ll see how much difference it makes.

Had a wonderful Father’s day. My family also got me a 53oz X-treme Gulp cup from 7-Eleven Little story there. I’ve been looking for a good cup of some sort to use at work to help myself get my recommended 64oz of water in a day. This one is 52oz., which should take care of most of my drinking needs in a day. And, I get to walk around work with a 52oz cup in my hand (or should I say hands, public saftey requirements dictate that I use two hands when walking with it).

So my wonderful family got me a Gameboy Advance for Father’s Day. Lucky for me, they decided to give it to me yesterday instead of waiting for Sunday. They also snagged me two games for it: Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Ages and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.

Oracle of Ages is really a Gameboy Color game with a few extra for the Advance, but I’ve been drooling over it for a few weeks now. It looks like a good classic Zelda game. I should have lots of fun with it.

Castlevania is a full fledged Gameboy Advance game and let me say WOW. If you enjoyed Symphony of the Night, you have to get this game. Very similar gameplay. I had a blast with it last night.

Only two complaints about the Gameboy Advance so far

1. The screen is a little hard to see unless you have the light just right on it. I’ll be buying one of the little clip on lamps in the near future, as soon as I figure out which one I want.
2. It actually seems like the machine is too small. I feel like my hands are a little cramped on it. I suspect this will get better as I adjust how I hold it some. I suspect I’m still trying to hold it like a PS2 controlled.

Other than that, it seems to be a great system. I just hope they can keep good games coming out for it.

Finished realMyst this past week. Very disapointing. I bought it because it has a new age. Sadly the new age didn’t really have anything to add to the storyline and didn’t give any more of a clear ending to the game than the original.

Wild Arms 2 is pretty good so far. Plot is pretty interesting. The game play is acceptable. It’s a little awkward, but overall I’m enjoying myself

Lionhead finally released a patch for Black & White last week, of course it’s only a beta patch. I installed it and everything seems to run fine. I’ve not yet checked to see if my creature is actually remembering things between saves now.

If you’ve not downloaded the demo for Arcanum, and you like RPGs, go fetch it. It looks to be quite an enjoyable game. Lots of character options. Lots of stats and abilities to tweak. I can hardly wait for it to come out now.

Dracula: Resurrection is pretty fun. It’s not Myst III, but I’m having a good time with it. It’s a little short, I suspect, given my progress so far, but it was only $20, so I’m not complaining.

Finished The Granstream Saga Saturday. Glad to have that over and done with. It has two endings, and it won’t be too hard to see the other one, so I might go back and see it just for the heck of it. All and all I recommend you avoid this game like the plague.

So there is news on the Black & White patch front. I quote from Official Web Site:

So apparently, EA has decided testing something to see if it works before releasing it is actually a good idea after all. Too bad they didn’t take that approach on the game.

Next game up, Wild Arms 2. Yep, I’m finally going to get around to playing it. Lots of people didn’t like Wild Arms, but I thought it was great. Hopefully, I’ll like this one too. More to come once I actually start playing.

Oh, did I mention how much fun SSX is? Allow me to mention it. SSX is tons of fun!

Well, Lionhead, the makers of Black & White [link1], aren’t gaining any points with me.

Yesterday, they delayed the badly needed patch for Black & White [link2] again, so that EA could do QA on it. After promising the patch to us yesterday. I can’t believe that they just suddenly realized that they needed to do QA on the patch. I’ve been very disapointed with the customer service on this game.

As you may remember, I was very happy with the game when I first got it. But since then, things have gone downhill fast. The bugs in the game render it almost unplayable in single player mode, which is what I was most interested in. And Lionhead first responded with silence, and now a series of missed promissed dates for the patch. This is not the way to get me to buy another game from you