Episode 266 is up, and they're off! The girls are down one purse and one jacket, but apparently up a couple of 'souvenirs'... This really hasn't been a good night for Ruby or the maître d'!
Holy fuck, where did 2008 go? This year flew by, and I've got nothing to show for it! Actually, that's not entirely true. I've been really happy with the art in OHP this year. My goal's been to push a much toonier style and shed a lot of the anime-inspired baggage. What's resulted is a weird hybrid of styles, often fluctuating wildly from panel to panel, but one that I'm enjoying a lot. There's nothing wrong with an Eastern influence, but these days I'm feeling that cartoons seem more alive with a more fluid approach to drawing. I've been on a Bakshi kick lately, so maybe he's to blame. Is anyone else freakin' excited about The Last Days of Coney Island, whenever it finally comes out?
I never thought I'd be pumped about a game coming out of EA ever again after my nine-month stretch at Redwood Shores, but I'll be damned if Mirror's Edge isn't totally amazing. Is this the dawn of a new age of puzzle-platforming? Don't be dissuaded by the lukewarm reviews this thing's getting, it's one of the most refreshing takes on first-person gaming since Portal (though definitely lacking some of its polish). Despite a short story mode, the core gameplay mechanics are so intuitive and so much fun in execution that the prospect of multiple play-throughs is actually sort of appealing. I think one of the worst things to happen to the game industry was when RPGs fooled people into believing that games needed to be more than 30 hours long in order to be good. I understand that with retail games costing 60 dollars a pop these days, people want more value for their money... but length is about as useful a measurement of "fun" as graphics. Play fun games because they're fun, not because they take a long time to finish!
