If anyone happens to be interested, I'm on Facebook.  One of many Thomas Meister's there, it seems.  (HINT: long-haired dude in Texas.)

I'm being flooded with a constant barrage of local political ads on YouTube about how CANSECO IS OUT FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS or GALLEGO VOTES 100% WITH ENVIRONMENTAL RADICALS and it is driving me insane.  I'm to the point where I only slightly give a fuck about who wins which election as long as that shit stops.

I don't think of it as particularly absurd.  The the rest of the developed world is banning everything from soda to toys because of potential harm they may cause, the US is simply following suit but not allowing the nanny state to over-extend itself in regards to one particular category.  Frankly, I'm happy the citizens of the US (or rather, the citizens of certain states in the US) put their foot down there.

EDIT:  If it seems any more consistent to you, the area trying to ban large sodas (NYC) has some of the most strict gun laws in the country.

 

I can't help but wonder if the government coming down on Buckyballs so hard had something to do with them being the first company to contest a ruling in over a decade.  It smells of trying to make an example of them.

I knew some of the back story behind this so it's not surprising to see this happen.  They fought the government and the government won. :(

Playing Shadow of the Colossus now.  Was planning to platinum Ico but, to hell with it, an under 2 hour speed run is pretty tedious and I don't like the game enough to spend a lot of time on it, in particular with Okami waiting on me. (I hate speed-runs in general, anyway.)  On that note...Okami is downloading as I type!  And Crash Bandicoot 2.

I loved 999 and based on Dice's commentary I'll have to pull together some scratch for Virtue's Last Reward one of these days.

I'm chomping at the bit to download Okami but need to wait a week or so to pick up some cash for it.  My PSN account has ten bucks in it so I'm halfway there.  I loved this game on PS2 and I'm certainly going to love it with updated visuals and trophy support.  As soon as I'm done with the Ico/Shadow of Colossus collection (and the trophies therein) I am diving straight into Okami.

In addition to Maximo: Ghosts to Glory I'm playing the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus collection.  I never had the opportunity to play Ico last generation -- it was always too expensive used due to its rarity by the time I found out about it -- so I've been very excited to try this.  Thus far it's great, though I do find the combat tedious.  The atmosphere is great, the scenery is beautiful, and the puzzles are fun.  I'm also very impressed by the way the game maintains a good pace and remains interesting in spite of being so minimalistic.  At this point I don't think it quite stands up to Shadow of the Colossus, but that's an extremely high bar to set.

I finally got the Platinum in Metal Gear Solid 2 tonight.  I doubt that any platinum (except perhaps the Demon's Souls platinum, and I'd have to check on that!) will ever be this difficult.  Between the 50 hours of VR missions, some of which were ridiculously hard, and having to collect dog tags off of soldiers on every mode between very easy to extreme (and beat extreme), along with all the other crap it required, it was a marathon.  I'm proud.  And now, I shall take a well-deserved break and play Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (which I downloaded off of PSN a few days ago for this very purpose) and enjoy a game that is only moderately fucking hard.

I rented the first ZOE and had a lot of fun with it...and then promptly forgot about its existence for several years.  I look forward to playing it again and to playing 2.  That said, I was planning on waiting a couple of months to buy it, but I will have to make other arrangements now that I've seen the collector's edition.  I'm a sucker for art books.

It's not so much that the trophy is tedious (though dogtags from very easy through extreme is getting a bit tedious) as that I felt, frankly, embarrassed to be playing on very easy mode.  That said, after running straight through very easy to normal for dogtags I am looking forward to tearing through some VR missions. (I already have all of Raiden's missions and some Snake missions completed so at least I'm not starting from scratch.)

As for the MGS4 platinum:  No, I haven't downloaded the trophy patch yet and frankly, I simply don't like that game enough to try for the platinum.  I'll likely make myself run through that game a second time and try to pick up some trophies in the process, though.

I've decided to work on the platinum trophies in the MGS HD Collection which means that I'm now focusing on dog tag collecting in Metal Gear Solid 2.  Specifically, I'm now playing the Plant chapter on very easy mode.  I feel dirty. :(

As someone noted earlier, this game is bought as soon as the opportunity arises.

By the way Agent D., interesting thoughts on who should voice Big Boss and why.  There's a thread on that subject over at MGSForums.

I've seen some photos of the Samus figure and it is very well done.  You must be happy to have that one in your collection.

No doubt it is, but I wanted to make a run through the game solo first.  I was particularly curious about handling the boss battles solo given that several reviewers whined about them being uber-hard due to being designed for multi-player.  I have no idea what they're complaining about, to be honest.  The only boss that really gave me any trouble was the final battle with Peace Walker, and that didn't take more than five tries, and to my knowledge I'm not an uber-awesome gamer.  Granted, I'm playing it in the HD Collection and not the PSP version, so they may have toned down the difficulty.  (I hope not since I can't get my PSP to recognize the Wi-Fi here...)

I was planning to continue the army building in Peace Walker when it was over, but MGS3 is calling me back and I'm having a hard time arguing.

Working my way through Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (HD Collection version) right now.  The enemies are dumb as rocks, but I'm greatly enjoying the boss battles and the army building elements.  I also have it on PSP and I'm pretty sure the army building elements will lend some excellent replay value to it.