Steampunk Willie

Mickey's going steampunk. Well, it's not really confirmed, but the concept art for some unannounced game called "Epic Mickey" was found on an artist's webpage recently. Check it out, some of it looks amazing, especially this one of a tin-man like Goofy. The game is expected to arrive on Nintendo's Wii if it ever sees the light of day. Oh, and Yoggoth, if you weren't in the know already, Steampunk is so out, Dieselpunk is where all the cool kids are at.

Ludology Pathfinder

(Doing some house cleaning here, this was posted back in May on sister site Cosmic American, but never made it's way here)

Allow me to gloat for a second here. I just finished up another semester of school yesterday, finally free to run around and enjoy the sun for a couple of months. The final project for one of my classes was to create a guide to a particular subject of our choosing. Known as a pathfinder in the library biz, these guides are designed to serve as an introduction to materials describing a subject, any subject, from Shakespeare to Dada. Naturally, I chose to make mine on videogames. It's got links to websites, the Ebert/Croal debate, and call numbers for those book-things in case you ever found yourself in a real library. Since no one else is ever going to see this thing besides my professor, I thought I'd share it with you here, have fun.

One Year Later...

Apologies for not updating the blog, but I've been short on time this summer. Between helping my parents with their unexpected move, a trip to Portland, and a wedding trip to Las Vegas, I haven't had the chance to blog about my ludological pursuits. After delving back into The Orange Box and playing through Half Life 2: Episode 2 (and witnessing it's out-of-left-field tragic ending) I've finally busted open the one box on my shelf I haven't opened since I got it nearly one year ago.

Last summer I began my journey through the Metal Gear saga. Borrowing a friend's PS2 I played through the original Metal Gear Solid. I had missed out on the entire series when it first debuted, having never owned a Playstation product before. So excited was I to further explore this series, and with some new games on the horizon that I was keen on (I'm looking at you LittleBigPlantet) I did the completely rash and unexpected act of buying a Playstation 3. The Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle to be exact - the last of the PS3s to include some form of backwards-compatability with PS2 games.

Throughout the past year I've blogged on more than one occassion about the series, from it's grand statements on war, to the uniquely Kojima touches, such as funny little conversations you have to go through just to save the game. Now the time has come to finish what I started. The other night I peeled off the plastic of that case I've had staring at me for nearly a year now and popped the Metal Gear Solid 4 disc in and began the final journey of Solid Snake. I'll be sure to include my thoughts on it when I'm done.