Intermission
Okay, once again I have dropped off the face of the earth, and I apologize. This time I have a valid reason, I swear! At the beginning of this month (August) I started working for KizToys, Inc., in Charleston, SC; since then I’ve been working quite a lot on their very cool MMO for kids and have been pretty unenthusiastic about sitting on the computer when I come home after a solid stretch of it at work (as fun as it is to work there). Anyway, lately I’ve been playing loads of Puzzle Quest thanks to finally getting around to hooking up my 360 again. Puzzle Quest is supremely awesome for someone who likes sitting down to play a game for 15-20 minutes at a time, or even a much lengthier commitment, so it’s been serving my new schedule quite well. (Also just biding time until I can afford to pick up Ghostbusters and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Oh and a PS3 Slim would be super also, thanks Santa.)
Puzzle Quest honestly baffles me, though, because I’ve been a longtime Bejeweled player, and since the basic mechanic is the same, I always looked at it like, “Well, it’s a casual game I’ve played to death, with leveling? What? Weird, ok.” I mistakenly attributed the addictive power of the now-wildly-popular game to the basic mechanic of play, which helps of course, but in this case is at least equally matched by the actual content added to it. I would never have imagined that somehow I could be leveling a Knight in a fantasy world, equipping all sorts of magical equipment (some I have crafted myself), riding a mount captured in battle, and throwing enemies in the Dungeon until I can get around to learning their spells… and yet be playing fancy Bejeweled at the same time. It’s really pretty ridiculous. As frustrating as the random game board can be (Why does the computer get so lucky?!??!) it’s overall a ridiculously successful idea that’s been executed so, so well.
Other than that, I’ve been sometimes watching The Life of Mammals ondemand and learning new things such as the behavior of kangaroo rats and the types of moles that live in deserts and how they have adapted to the shifting sand to ’swim’ through it oh and also their eyes have been covered with skin and fur. FREAKY. Also, the baby of nearly every mammal is adorable, but marsupials got a really short stick in that draw. And I’ve also been psyching myself up for the new season of Heroes (Yay!!!) and a new season of Dexter (omg!!!) as well as watching True Blood and wondering why I never got around to publishing my vampire novels before the whole idea became so wildly generic. Sigh.
Final note: A while ago I put up my website, http://www.jmecannon.com, and it needs more updates but bookmark it anyway. kthnx
