Hey, I like thinking about flying. Whether in a plane or a glider or running fast enough (Mario-style) to take off. I’ve never really flown myself by myself in any way (i went up in a Cessna once and the pilot let me take control for a few brief minutes. that was pretty nice.), but it’s easy to imagine. I dream about it all the time.

I was at a comic book store today (actually, since I’m in Arlington, let’s just say I was at the comic book store), looking for something other than video games to spend the tiny bit of my budget that’s designated to fight boredom. Because the Circuit City sale let me down and nothing omgworthy is out at the moment, I’m giving my DS a break.

At the store, I had picked up vol. 1 of Bone, which I’ve been wanting for probably 10 years now (never got around to it), and looking for something else indie-ish to pick up. There were a lot of things that I was thinking about. My friend, who is more into superheroey comics and works for a bookstore, pointed out Flight, volume 3.

All he said was “we got this in this week, it looks interesting,” and I flipped it open. The visual style changed every couple pages. Drastically, from cutesy to collage to watercolor to sketchy to everything else. I fancy myself an artist sometimes, just enough to appreciate stuff like this. The book itself is made up of a lot of short comic stories, all done by different writers and artists with different moods. Some of them are incredibly deep. Some are not, but they are if you think about them enough. The common thread is that they all have to do with flying one way or another.

I picked out volume 1, just to be safe.

So, I took my Bone and Flight vol. 1 to the register and spent about as much as I would have for a new DS game. It occured to me that these things get expensive.

No regrets at all though. Flight is really good. It unapologetically artistic — it dosen’t start with any explanation, it puts you right into a story about a canine pilot almost losing control of a plane over water. It’s set to poetry and lasts only 4 pages.

Airplanes are an obvious theme, but the book involves so much more. Travel, angel wings, kites, falling, Aesop, kidnapping, flying squirrels, trapezemen…

I usually don’t write much about comics, because I’m not into them very much. I’ve been reading Mouse Guard on 4CR’s recommendation, and years before that I read Good Bye, Chunky Rice. I don’t get into them that often, but I’m thinking I will more since I just found a few more titles that I really like. Flight just really touched me. The other two volumes are $30 each, but I would be all over them if I weren’t saving for a camera.

Considering stuff like this, I think comics are, artistically, way head of video games. Comics went through a phase sometime in the past decade and came out with so much more. Video games, I think, are about to have the same thing happen. This coming generation. Games have had their glory days, technology has improved, and it’s finally time for the ideas about gaming to be pushed a little further, but with respect to the history and semantics of the media. It’s going to be an interesting time.

A little update.

It has not been a good month for playing games for me. I’ve been able to actually sit down for only a few hours total outside work and I get a gold-coin run in Mario every once in a while. I’m home and awake for maybe a couple hours a day, one in the morning, one in the evening. I never get to see my girlfriend anymore, and I live with her. Having 2 jobs + class + research work + lab work really sucks. This summer has been the worst so far. But that’s not what this is about.

It has been an excellent month for photography. One, because I know people who are willing and able to loan me their cameras, since the only camera I have is a failing Kyocera/Yashica 3MP something-or-other that I won from USA Network’s “Friday Bonzai Movie” back in 2001. We had some good times. I think the final picture count was about 8,000. That one is retired now.

Two, because I am a very serious professional newspaper dude yes now (read: now i get to do everything else in addition to editing because i thought i was grown up enough to start work at a fledgling paper where i’m one third of the staff), I get sent out to take pictures of very important events (many of which involve psycho little kids). I think I like photography the best.

Camera ranting and/or Nikon fanboyism continues below.
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About half of insert credit’s forumgoers are using these candybar dolls as an avatar. They’re like little Korean paper pixel dolls. It takes the proccupation I had with dressing up Ragnarok characters to a whole new level.

Check out my totally accurate portrait to the right! You can tell that I rock out in front of persimmon trees, own a badass red hoodie, have lush brown hair and wear flip-flops all the time. Only a couple of those are outright lies.

But whatever. Go make your own. I used Boy Candybar DollMaker 2, but Dollmaker 3 works too.

I just played my first couple hours of Sly 2. (thanks Shep~!) Damn. While the first was just a thief-themed platformer with a little bit of stealth action, this sequel has taken the emphasis straight to… I dunno… hardcore raccooning. It’s less about making jumps and avoiding lasers (but those are still involved) than it is about accomplishing things and stealing stuff. Sucker Punch took the background and theme that they used to make a good platformer and enhanced it into a game that still stands on its own. Sly has practically evolved a generation in a single iteration by putting a similar style of nonlinearity as the first into a story-driven scenario with three characters.

That said, I think that there are things about the first game that I miss in the second. There’s always a tradeoff, no matter how well it’s done. Like the different characters. Playing as Sly is always the best, and I feel handicapped by the others. Sly 2 reminds me of the feeling of danger that I got from playing Thief way back when I first built myself a computer. When you get into a bad enough situation that you should have avoided, there’s no way out. That’s kind of cool though. It forces you to think about stealth for its own sake and brings the game out of the realm of the platformer.

The camera has problems this time around though. Maybe it’s the larger, more nonlinear levels, but I get the camera stuck behind a wall at the worst times. The first game had a nearly flawless camera, so this is a little jarring.

The bottom line is that this is another good entry into a series that I’m discovering to be astoundingly fun and polished.

Now then, I’ve been told to write a review of New SMB for the community paper. That’s what I get for playing my DS at the office all the time.

Hope everyone got to play a DS yesterday like 4CR told you to. I know I did, even though I haven’t even had the opportunity to click my GBM on for the past week. Thanks to a sick girlfriend, I actually got to spend some time at home. Some friends came over, and epic Meteos and Mario Kart battles followed.

Other than that, I’m learning that putting together a community newspaper with a microscopic staff (3 people) is a bitch. I’m enjoying it, even if I am doing a little of everything. I like photography the best. Check out some photos at the tanukiflickr.

Never mind the kangaroo pictures. I gotta keep my sanity somehow.

A friend bought me Killer7. I insisted that he shouldn’t, and that I was going to get it as soon as I wasn’t broke any longer, but he did anyway.

It’s kinda cool. I like the sparseness of it, but I don’t like the fact that few clues are given for certain things, while the obvious things are talked about all the time. Like, how do I use Kaede’s ability to get the second soul shell? Even FAQs aren’t helping me. I’m missing something big.

The creepiness is videogame-cheesy in the beginning, but it grew on me. There are just so many nice touches, even though the overall product feels a little shaky. It’s almost bad, but it’s almost artfully calculated to be bad. The oversimplification is either something that makes or breaks the game. I’ll know after a few more hours.

The presentation really makes the game though. I like it and I would be playing more of it, except that the room I was playing it is being torn apart at the moment. I moved to the living room but had to play something more family-friendly (2-year-old nephew in the house). Star Fox Assault it was. I’m warming up to it a lot; I’m now on a third playthrough and still enjoying it. Survival mode is pretty cool: no saves, three lives, lose ‘em and it’s over. Very classic. I only wish that it had more flying levels, or branching paths like all the other SFs. Gotta play SF64 again. That one is a masterpiece.

I’m also going to get Luigi’s Mansion and Super Monkey Ball in the mail soon. If I have time between my job, my other job, class, labs and research, that’ll be some good times with my girlfriend.

It’s odd that the GameCube is suddenly my system of choice. When I had to pack everything up from the room that’s being rearranged, I left out only the GC. When I went to look at used games (this being the time K7 was bought for me), I looked mostly at the GC stuff.