House of the Dead 4

So the other day I was browsing the PSN store to see if there was anything interesting. I found House of the Dead 4, which I had no idea anyone was even making. Since it was cheap, and I enjoyed playing HoD3 in the arcade, I figured why the hell not, so I bought it.

Dear Esther

CAUTION: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

A lone man. A deserted island. The story of one terrible night, slowly driving you mad. These are the things that make up Dear Esther.

Atmosphere and story are the driving forces of this experience. In fact, I'd say that they are nearly the only things in this game at all. I don't know what I expected when I picked up Dear Esther, but I know that it wasn't what I got.

Finally!

So about two months ago, I got a brand new TV. About a month ago, it broke. Completely out of the blue. No visible damage, no power surges, nothing. I promptly spent the following month being dicked around by Sony's customer service department. They were terrible.

First, they wouldn't even talk to me without my MAILING them a copy of my receipt. Seriously? Who uses the mail these days? Haven't they ever heard of email? I guess that would probably mean they'd have to replace it sooner, though, wouldn't it?

And we're back!

I just got back from a much needed weekend hanging out with several of my college friends. It put me a little behind my planned schedule for my posts, but I really needed the mental health benefits.

So here's a run-down of my planned upcoming posts: I'm going to have a text review of "Dear Esther" done this week. I have it mostly finished, but I feel that to do the game justice, I should really play through it again. Warning: this one will contain significant spoilers, because there really isn't any other way to talk about it.

A Film Interlude

So I just finished watching this really terrible thing called "This is Not a Movie." I would totally disagree with the title by pointing out that it does, in fact, meet all of the criteria of a movie, but I just don't care enough.

Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time

Oh MAN! I FINALLY BEAT THIS GAME! I originally bought this game as part of the Journeyman Project Trilogy pack somewhere around 12 years ago. I was breezing right through it until I had to enter the temple in Shangri-La. That's when EVERYTHING went bad. I do mean everything. The game crashed, freezing my computer utterly and forcing me to do a manual reset to get it to turn off. Oh, and this happened EVERY TIME I got to that part of the level.