Adventures in Nippon!

[Listening to: Tyr - Ragnarok]

So, I've been playing Okami as much as I can manage in between school and work since I picked up just one week ago. I'm somewhere around the 13 or 14 hour mark, and I'm glad to say that I've enjoyed every second of it so far. It's just so beautiful. There's no other way to describe it. As far as gameplay goes, it's been great so far. I can paint objects into being. I've bloomed trees into a state of Bob Ross happiness. I don't swim; I leap to and from astrally-created lily pads. I earn mad respect from feeding hungry animals(including tigers!). Note that I've done all this while serving up a healthy dose of divine ownage to a variety of demons. Needless to say, I'm loving it. Also, I've only fought two bosses at this point, so I'm expecting to log in a fair amount of hours before the adventure ends.

I picked up Mega Man ZX the week before Okami was released, and I had enough time to play through it before Amaterasu came calling. I had a really good time with it, except for the horrible map design. Capcom tried to add an adventure element of sorts to the game, which I'm okay with, but they sort of botched it all with the map. Having a connected world gave a sense of continuity, which was nice, but that didn't outweight cursing at the map when I couldn't figure out where to bring the pain next. However, the map didn't put enough of a damper on things to prevent me from playing it every free moment I had.

The Tokyo Game Show was last week, and while it was somewhat disappointing overall, some great trailers were shown. I really wanted to see a trailer for RE5 or RE:UC, but neither were present. However, Devil May Cry 4 was, and it looks pretty awesome in both the trailer and playable footage I saw.

What really blew me away, though, was the new Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer. It's composed of a lot of gameplay, albeit with some altered camera angles for the sake of dramatics. It looks absolutely incredible. Actually, that doesn't quite express how awesome it looks. Snake is like, the divine weilder of smoking and moustache retribution. And the music featured in the trailer is spellbinding. If that track, or something derived from it, is present during gameplay, I have no doubt that my playing ability will increase tenfold. Atleast in my mind. The entire presentation just gives the feeling that Snake is on some sort of holy mission, and getting in the way is a very bad idea. Watching it the first time caused such excitement that I wouldn't have been surprised had I drawn a moustache on myself with a Sharpie and snuck around the house, or atleast swallowed some glass to sound more like the man himself. Instead of doing either of those I just sat here in awe, probably peeing a little. Seriously, check it here.

Also, I encourage everyone to check out today's post music at www.tyr.net I can honestly say you don't need to be a fan of metal, either. Their new album, Ragnarok, is incredible. I'm talking album of the year quality. I'll be picking it up as soon as it gets to some US distributors.

Well, that's all for now. Night, everyone. Or should I say morning? o.O