I got distracted this morning trawling the news and sifting through press releases. A beckoning tangent led me to investigate as much as possible the new PSP title Harvest Moon: Boy and Girl. Another Harvest Moon for the handheld so soon after Innocent Life? Well, where Innocent Life was a quiet (and beautiful) revolution in Harvest Moon gameplay and story, Boy and Girl returns to the series tradition. That means I have to buy it. See, I have a very simple brain, with simple boolean operations. Is game Harvest Moon? True. Then buy.
In actual news, 1up has a nice first-person account of a playthrough of an entire Halo 3 level. This comes right on the heels of the announcement that you’ll be able to play the game in four-player co-operative mode via Xbox Live. I’m a weird one, in that I’ve never really enjoyed the Halo multiplayer experience, but playing through in co-op with a friend has created some of my fondest gaming memories. Maybe I’m just not very competitive. I look forward to being not very competitive with three other players this fall.
A much-publicized opinion piece regarding apparent racism in Resident Evil 5 has been creating a minor hubbub lately. I’m inclined to chalk the whole mess up to hypersensitivity, because there’s no inherent valuing or devaluing of race going on in the game (as was done with those awful, legitimately offensive PSP ads). On the other hand, my argument along those lines would be appealing to whether there was a reason in the fiction for the game to be set in Africa, beyond the spectacle of location, and I should really know better than to appeal to the fiction of a series that had a midget Napolean-wannabe releasing his impotent rage against the fourth wall in its last entry.
Did you buy that last issue of OXM for the exclusive Eternal Sonata demo? Did you maybe get a little bit peeved over being charged for something that you’ve grown accustomed to obtaining for free? Then bend you mind toward fervent prayer that Microsoft doesn’t decide to go this route and start offering exclusive demos with a $2.50 price tag attached. Sure, it’s cheaper than buying a magazine, but it is kind of infinitely more expensive than "free."
Hey, cool. I get to defend Uwe Boll. Check out this story from Gamespot regarding the Washington Post getting all in a tizzy over a pair of parody sites that Boll has put up to hype his movie Postal. Then pour one out for Larry Flynt and his successful arguments for the legal preservation of parody.
That’s probably a bizarre enough note to end the day on.