A Very Merry Weekend

I hope everyone around the intertubes had as good of a Christmas as I did. Sorry for not posting a warning that I'd be MIA for the past 5 days, but once the break from work and school settled in, I barely touched my PC, much less my blog.

Saw Sweeney Todd on Saturday while out and about with the wife, and can heartily recommend it to any fan of musicals, gore, Depp, or otherwise. I also snagged a total of 3 new games for the 360 over the long break: NBA 2K8, Crackdown, and the glorious Mass Effect. Each of which is a hearty "Hell Yes!" purchase, and I thank all of those nice folks who commented with other purchasing ideas. I'm definitely going to be referring to those lists over the next few months. Every spring, though I usually hate the turn-based combat, I get the itch for a good old-fashioned J-RPG, so Blue Dragon will be in the rotation come March or so. Thanks for reminding me of that one. The rest will all likely get gobbled up too... a bevy of wisdom you lot are.

Spent Monday with the In-Laws, which was a nice relaxing time spent watching movies and eating home-made pizza. 28 Weeks Later is "meh", by the way. Nowhere near as riveting as the 1st. Then spent Christmas day with my family, since my dad and step-mom were in town for the first time ever as we usually go out their way for the holidays. Now that us kids are grown though, it has become readily apparent that it's easier for them to come our way since we're all in Ohio anyway.

Their arrival was followed by a massive mixed-family party at my brother's house which ended up being a lot of food, fun, and drunk people to laugh with. I stayed sober myself, which I am grateful for as I always get severely dehydrated the day after, regardless of how much water I cap the night off with. Good times.

I spent most of yesterday then working on my first client's design project and when it was completed, I found myself whiling away the hours with Mass Effect. Never has an RPG drawn me in like this one. BioWare, with this release, I think really has proven that games are just as viable of an artform for storytelling as film. I can't wait to see how the rest of it unfolds.

Anyway, I need to get some work done, but if I get caught up and things are slow you might get some nice detailed impressions from me on some of my purchases (as if you care). Oh! Less than two more weeks until Pirates opens up for the pre-orderers. I'm looking forward to getting into that one and seeing how it's shaped up over the past couple months I've been away from the game. Here's hoping it's enough to pull me away from my new toy at least for a while. I'm still on the fence between it and TR as to which one I'll keep as my active sub. TR is still fun, though I haven't played it since before my break as most of my game-time has gone into fiddling with the 360... too bad there's no rest XP in that one, hehe.

Cheers!