The results are in!

So my two-week gaming fast ended yesterday. I was actually surprised by how easily I was able to adjust to the change. I simply replaced the time I spent playing games with time reading books and comics, ultimately proving that I am a lazy bastard who can’t be bothered to do anything worthwhile. Even when hanging out with Baps and Weezle we were pretty able in finding other things to do. It really wasn’t a problem at all, but I was still very happy when I’d engulfed myself with Star Wars Battlefront yesterday.

I also celebrated by buying myself Phantasy Star Universe for PS2, which I’ve been anticipating for at least a year now. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be able to get online for a while, if ever, but I’ve been rather enjoying the single player story mode so far. The beginning was utter cinema hell with uselessly brief playing bits thrown to bog things down even further, but once you get to actually go on missions and fight monsters, it’s pretty cool. It plays like a cleaner version of Phantasy Star Online as your character’s and enemies’ movements are smoother. All the weapons I’ve tried so far have unique attack motions and uses and are fun to use. The light, normal, and heavy attack system of PSO has been eradicated in favor of special attacks (which can be attributed to individual weapons, not your character himself) and the ability to use dual weapons. That is, you can hold, for example, a one-handed gun and a one-handed blade at the same time. Definitely a cool feature.

I’ve yet to open Extra Mode (I’ll probably be able to do it today after work), but I’m really looking forward to being able to create my own character and not being stuck with the lame main character, Ethan Waber, and the uninteresting story mode. Story mode isn’t bad, but it could easily win the generic RPG story of the year award. The real meat of the game is on the battlefield.

Of course, this is all based on my experiences with the game offline. I envy the people who can afford to hook up broadband to their consoles and pay the $10 Guardian’s License monthly fee. Oh well, maybe someday next year.

In other news, I went to my first comics convention on Sunday. It was cool, but small. I was hoping it’d be more of a show than a bunch of booths owned by vendors strutting their stuff. I’m also more of a graphic novels guy rather than a collector of individual issues and there wasn’t much in the ways of my preferred medium. Still, I picked up some cool stuff, some of which will be in the upcoming comics review post that has been delayed for months and months thanks to my laziness. I met a couple of cool guys at the convention, too: Sean Wang, who signed my new copy of Runners, and Rich Woodwall, the co-creator and writer/artist for Johnny Raygun. I definitely recommend both of their works for the fun-loving comic book geeks out there.