l33t

i may just cut off comments on pulp altogether and set up a message board. since i’m retooling the site into a real website, i’m not sure i want direct feedback on the front page. i like it, but it never gets used, and a message board would be easier to maintain. it would also make it more usable for people to have discussions independant of myself. threadbumping and whatnot.

saturday i got up and headed over to eric and xima’s to hang with The Gang. they were all making brunch of pancakes, faux-sage, and some bananas. it was sweet. then we all watched miles play katamari damaci for a few hours, which prompted aaron and eric to order copies off amazon.

then, since zach and mo(sp?) hadn’t seen charlies angels we watched that. i’d forgotten how much fun that movie was, and how much cooler bill murray was than bernie mac.

then aaron and gwyn and i headed out to the pioneer to see the incredibles. it was incredible. haha. no really, it was, it was absolutely good. i heart pixar. i don’t heart regal, and i certainly am never going to see another kids movie at a regal again, until the next pixar movie at least. at least they didn’t play The Twenty.

i am really really excited for Revenge of the Sith. anakin vs obi-wan for 14 minutes. you know you want it. the trailer shows, among other things, mace and yoda with much lightsaber action, and most notable, THE FUCKING EMPEROR WITH A LIGHTSABER!!! this movie is going to end with all the jedi dead or dying, the emperor in power, and obi-wan and yoda in hiding. i’m going to go home after it’s over and watch a new hope and it’s going to be GOOD.

hell, we might even get some prototype death star action.

the things i’m doing in halo 2 right now are completely insane. i can’t talk about them, and god bless bungie for keeping such a tight lid on the story. what i can talk about is how satisfying stealing a covenant mortar tank is. or running around with an energy sword.

as far as the quality of the game, what i’ve been realizing more and more is that the perfection we enjoyed in halo 1 wasn’t the product of obsessive attention to balance and detail; it was a little of that and a lot of dumb luck.

i had seriously psyched myself up over all the hype for this game, even despite scott’s admonitions not to convince myself the bus would be driveable, or the civilian hog, or whatnot. part of this is my fault for being too optimistic, thinking ‘bungie wouldn’t do that to us, they’re good people’ and part of it was the half a dozen things bungie mentioned early in the dev cycle and then cut from the final release.

it’s one of those moments, like when you realize your parents are mere mortals and not the olympian gods you imagined. it’s disappointing on a level beyond simply ‘man, i wish you could do drive-bys with the katana on the motorcycle’.

still. it’s much better on heroic.

most of my problems at this point are with things they ‘fixed’ from the first game. the hog no longer tries to drive over any obstacle you point it at, for example. it gets caught up on walls instead of grinding it’s way back to going forward. the tank is slower. the secondary fire on the wraith and banshee is disabled in multiplayer.

you can’t drive the shadow. open cockpit, undamaged, no driving. you CAN use the turret, which just makes it worse, really.