VIDEO GAMES!

Tis the season! The dam has broken! All the holiday-time titles are all hitting the market within the next few months! What a great time to be a nerd. :)

Here are some of my favorites:

Brutal Legend: Weird game. Sort of a mashup between an action game and a strategy game, all set in the strange, beautiful ancient land where Heavy Metal rules the day and guitar solos can literally melt faces. Great writing courtesy of industry legend Tim Shafer, but the game is only 'ok'. I liked it, though.

Ratchet and Clank: Another in the series comes out next week, and Jess is VERY EXCITED about this one. This is her favorite game series, and is made by her favorite developer, Insomniac Games. They've made a LOT of really great ones over the years.

Borderlands: Another hybrid, this time of a First Person Shooter and an online Role-playing game, where you can find new equipment (guns, sheilds, etc) and play with friends. I'm interested mostly because it's coming out this week for PC, and I'll need something to play while Jess takes over the TV for Ratchet and Clank.

Dragon Age: A PC Role-playing game from industry giant Bioware. They've got a long history of great PC RPGs, and this looks to be shaping up like all the rest.

Facebook Civilization: This actually just got announced, but I thought my Facebook-enabled family might be interested. They're going to be making a civilization game for Facebook. Civ is actually one of the longest running strategy game series, and is well regarded for deep and involving gameplay. I've been considering starting playing some facebook games because 1) they're free and 2) I can play them upstairs on my laptop while Jess reads.

Micro News! I'm going to England in two weeks! The date has been set, the tickets have been purchased, and the beer is on tap. I leave Nov 1 and I get back Nov 8, so if anyone has anything extra-British they need, let me know.

I've finished the tutorial books I got for Cubase and Reason, and so I can start getting down to the thrilling job of writing music! I'm planning a two-pronged approach. The method I learned in my Music Theory classes actually involves starting with a poem (lyrics) writing a melody, and then assigning chords that fit. The other approach is just to play around with my synthesizers and see what comes out.

It's been raining here, and I planted a whole bunch of wildflower seeds around our flowerbeds and around the new tree in the backyard. They've already started to sprout! We'll have to see what comes up. I'll post pictures.

Peace, love, unity and respect!

-N