I know, a real post; it's shocking, isn't it? Kind of took me by suprise, too, considering I just sat down and decided to write a post without having any idea what to put in it. Well ... I think there might have been some vague thought of talking about coffee, since I got up just now and there was actually coffee left in the pot. Amazing, I tell you -- that doesn't happen very often around here, when I get up in the afternoon. Overall, though, it looks like you're in for another one of my completely aimless and random posts. (I wonder how many people are going to stop reading it at this point.)
With Thanksgiving weekend over, and the visiting relatives gone, I've been back at PlanetSide and Metroid Prime 2 Echoes. One thing I'm finding with MP2, though, is that it hasn't drawn me in near as much as the first game did. It's a fun game, and I enjoy it quite a bit when I play, it's just ... I don't have that same urge to play for hours on end. I'm still really early on in the game just because when I do play, it's usually not for more than an hour at a time, and like with every Metroid game on my first play-through, I'm taking things slow. (I just got the Light Beam and the second Dark Agon Temple key, if anyone's wondering.) So it's a great game, I'm just having a hard time getting into it, I guess.
Part of my trouble, I think, is the fact that the dark world's atmosphere hurts you whenever you're not inside a light crystal's protective sphere. (You know, I keep thinking of FF Crystal Chronicles whenever I talk about the dark world's atmosphere and the light crystals. Funny how similar the two games are in that regard, considering how different they are in every other way.) It's a neat gameplay mechanic, to make you have to watch where you're going and to conserve energy in the dark world, but it seems way too limiting for me. I like to explore anywhere and everywhere, but I can't do that in the dark world without dying, which is really annoying. Also, when you're forced to spend any decent length of time running from one crystal to another, you have to sit and wait for your energy to recharge at one point per second while you're in the protective sphere. That, too, annoys me quite a bit, since if you don't sit and wait to regain energy, you're going to die all too quickly if you happen to run into a nasty enemy. I really can't wait to get the Dark Suit, and later the Light Suit, so I won't have to care so much about venturing outside the crystals' spheres in the dark world; I think that will really help me get into the game more, because I'll be able to more fully explore both the light and dark worlds without death constantly hanging over my shoulder.
Oh, yeah, a funny thing about MP2: You know those MP2 demo discs that Nintendo was sending out before the game's release, that you could get if you registered five games on Nintendo.com? Well, apparently they still have copies of the disc, because they sent me one when I registered my copy of MP2, which was my fifth registered game. So now that I own the game, I can finally play the demo. ... Though I suppose the Metroid Chronicle timeline thing and the art gallery on the disc is still worthwhile. I really wish I had my PC set up with a video-in line so I could take screen shots of some of that art.
Shifting games here, I'm tempted to start playing Super Smash Bros. Melee again, after talking with Sciros over AIM last night. I'd really love to polish my skills with L-canceling and actually learn to effectively use wavedashing, except that there's not really much motivation to do it since I play against CPUs 95% of the time. And when I do get to play against another human, I can usually already beat them as is. Right now, I think the only motivation to really practice would be so that when I would get to play other people I could show off and beat them by a little more.
It's over!
