It’s a sad day when you discover the subject you think you’re a god in is the subject you’re only really really rediculously good at. My recent employment at EB Games is supposed to be a cake walk, but thanks to the barrage of questions thrown at me daily, I’ve come to realize I need to broaden my gaming knowledge.

I feel like I just found at that I’m really a white guy. That’s the half truth. I am a white guy, but only on the inside. I dare you to find a bigger uncle Tom than me. Hell, I can’t even genuinely rap along to 2Pac without my friends mocking me and/or giving me strange looks. Now that you know where I’m coming from, I’ll continue.

Today this guy asked me about a Zelda compelation disk I didn’t even know existed and when he called me out on the fact that I didn’t know about it, he might as well have kicked me in the nuts. I’ve played about four PC games since I converted to console gaming and this nerd totally floored me with his knowledge of strategy games. I freakin’ love strategy games! What the f*ck is my problem?! All I know is no one better ask me about any RPGs. That last one I’ve beaten is FFX. Pete, help me out here dude. Rescue me from the coming wave of embarassment.

(What, I was feeling lazy and didn’t feel like making up a creative blog title).

So Rockstar just sent me a box image of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Looks good, but to be honest, I didn’t even know the game was in development. I feel so out of hte loop ever since I’ve devoted more time to other things outside of the editorial gaming world. I’ve asked them to send me some information so that if you’re like me — we can all be up to date.

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In other news, I’ve been pondering the purchase of a Wacom tablet. GN’s Joseph Luster tells me that he picked one at Best Buy for a mere $100 bucks. I had always imagined (and heard) that these devices were somewhat expensive. Well, they are — depending on the size of the tablet itself. Decisions, decisions. Perhaps I should just flip a coin.

Anyone else got one — if so, what stuff have you done with it?

So it’s been awhile since the 360 was turned on. Planning to check out Prey later tonight and see what’s new in the Xbox Live Marketplace… or perhaps I’ll just go through the remaining games I’ve got in my collection. Of course, I need to dedicate some time to drawing. I’ve finally moved into the world of digital coloring and I must say — it’s really enjoyable. Of course, as a beginner, I have a long way to go before I can whip up some savvy, colorful productions, but my DA colleague says that I’m off to a good start. Here’s my first attempt.

As you can see, it wasn’t quite finished and for good reason. I got a brief education about color saturation and how to set up the coloring process in layers. Generally, you break down your linework, background, flats and shades as individual layers. This way, should you make a mistake or want to make edits, you’re not forced to start from scratch or excessively abusing the Undo command. Anyways, I’ve already began working on a better version of the aformentioned link above. You can drop over to my DA section later this week when it’s done.

Edit:
Oh — before I forget, here are the results for the “What do you think of the DS Lite?”

72.73% voted “I love it.”
9.09% voted “It’s ok.”
No surprise here, but no one voted for “Don’t like it.”
4.55% voted “I prefer my original DS”
13.64% voted “Not planning to buy one”

I’m curious if the percentage that aren’t planning to buy one simply aren’t into handhelds.
We’ll have a new poll up later tonight!

This past weekend was the first ever Louisville edition of the 48 Hour Film Project. BigWig Films had to participate and, naturally, we drew one of the more ridiculous genres: Fantasy.

At the end of the weekend we’ve left the world with TRANSPORTAL, an epic to end all epics starring myself and the young starlet Jennifer Smith (with appearances by writer/co-director John Wishon and DP Bryan Adams as “Enemy Agent #1 and “Enemy Agent #2″ respectively).

Our screening (known to our fans as the “World Premiere”) is on Wednesday, so I’ll post it on youtube and this site immediately after. I don’t want anyone in Louisville prepared for their transportation into the world of TRAAAANSPOOOOORTAAAAAAL.

I’ll post more about the production later. I’m going to go reward myself by consuming products at various retail outlets.

I’m not a fan of first person shooters. In fact, I pretty much suck at playing them. I had, however, heard many good things about Deus Ex, especially concerning the story. I am a sucker for a good story so I decided to give it a try. For only five measly dollars, I had the PS2 version of the game in my possession. Since I already knew I sucked at these types of games, I put the difficulty on Easy and went on my merry way.

The first thing that popped out at me were the kinda lousy graphics. The environments were bland and the character models looked blocky and had little animation. I realize I was playing the inferior version on the PS2 but it even looked crappy for a PS2 game. The frame rate was somewhat steady but if the action got too fierce, slowdown would rear it’s ugly head. It is not the worst looking game I have ever seen, but I thought it could have definitely used some extra polish. The music in this game fared much better, each piece was moody and fit each section of the game perfectly. I also enjoyed *most* of the voice acting but in some areas (Hong Kong I am looking at you) the accents were just terrible. Don’t even get me started about Paris.

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I don’t talk about work much because the place I’m employed by gets pissy when its employees say they work there. I’ll just refer to them as Game Retailer for this next bit.

So it’s been a busy day, nothing but a sprint for the finish line since the moment I punched in. Lots of people combined with getting ready for inventory means that there’s never a dull moment. Mini-rushes, sidework, and dealing with the second controller on the 360 interactive quitting (for a total of zero working controllers now), combined with one final press of people at quarter of closing, manage to put me way behind schedule. No big deal, I’m not complaining. If I wanted a boring job I’d be doing something else.

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