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
Review: Boom Blox, Wii
Okay. So I’m finally back here to review something. This time around I decided to mix it up with a newer game for the Wii, Boom Blox (May 2008), created by Electronic Arts in cooperation with Steven Spielberg. His name is on the main title screen, and most people will probably never have any idea what he actually contributed to the project, but I liked seeing it because it reminded me of Animaniacs. It’s rated E for Everyone. Boom Blox isn’t something I technically own, but whoever lent it to Steve has left it at the apartment for so long that I keep forgetting it isn’t ours. And, we’ve played it obsessively for weeks now, which is obviously the only qualification necessary for me to compliment/mock any game.
The box art for the game Boom Blox.
The Gist Of It: Like nearly every other game on the Wii, Boom Blox makes exclusive use of the Wiimote. You don’t need the nunchuck to play at all. It has several different game modes, but the main idea of the game is that you’re either basically playing a game of complicated and shiny Jenga, or throwing balls at an intricate tower of blocks in order to knock them down and earn the most points. In single-player, there are over 300 levels broken into two categories, one with a sort of ’story’ to explain why you are flailing around in the living room. Usually, it has to do with a city or town of animals; in the first group of levels, a medieval culture of sheep-people need shiny jewels, then they are attacked by another various animal group, etc. One look at the cover art can give you an idea of what these animal people look like – blocky, squarish things that tend to wiggle to express any and all emotion.
Anyway, before I was sidetracked by the jell-o creatures – the second single-player mode is one that basically familiarizes you with the controls. In multiplayer, things really get interesting. You can have usually two and sometimes four players doing anything from pulling blocks out of a precarious tower, trying to avoid collapse, to chucking bowling balls at the opponent’s block castle, or throwing baseballs at a mountain of gold blocks trying to knock those with high-point values into oblivion. It has some original details as well, like a color-coded tower and a random pick of which color you’re allowed to remove, or giant green blocks that explode when they touch each other, or good old-fashioned bomb blocks that simply go boom.
This is a relevant update, really
So, since I have heard good things about my last review (though no one has left me any actual comments q_q) I’ve been compiling a list of other games to review in the near future. I have a large variety of games and consoles at my disposal, but I’m not sure if I should stick to one theme over another right now. What I mean is, since I started off with an SNES RPG, should I deliberately not review an RPG for a while, or maybe should I aim to review something new? Or should I just go with whatever comes to mind? I would rather try and write about things that aren’t already widely renowned as being amazingly good or bad, since that would make the informative value of the review pretty low. Any feedback on this would be appreciated. I’ll try to post another review before the end of the week. Ciao!
Flood of text: commence!
Well, here we are at a shiny, fancy pants, brand spankin’ new blog. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever had something you could really call a blog before. Usually just a journal. A place for random pieces of information that are so fascinating that a blog could not even handle them. Information such as, “It’s hot today. Blah.” I am sorry to say that vital updates as to the state of my kitchen, the current weather, and even how nice of an outfit I am currently wearing, will not be included in this blog.
I know, this is mind boggling. Try and contain yourself for a moment though. I promise that I will fill this blog with a lot of very amazing and wonderful information, written entirely and 100% by yours truly, my own self, Jamie Cannon, with a full intent to be amusing yet informative. I hope to use this space to discuss my three greatest passions: reading, writing, and… no, not arithmetic! Game design. Video games. Wherever these topics coincide with each other I hope to write something really terrific and fun for you to read. And really for the most part they will be posts with a thorough examination of a set topic and then I will try to leave the reader with something to take away from it all.
Good luck Future Jamie. You’ll need it!
