Jak 3 is a really well-made game. In my case, there's been a lot of, shall we say, trial by fire, and I've had to resist the urge to fling the controller at the TV in frustration when I miss the long jump roll... for the 20th time... or I find myself in a room full of sentries that kill on contact. But there's still a big draw to it and the pacing is such that you don't really want to put it down. The fact that it runs on the 61" TV in 16x9 480p without a hitch is just icing on the cake. (Though I've found that turning on 'GAME MODE" on the television is essential; it cuts down on some of the latency caused by the ongoing video up-conversion and makes those long jumps just a bit more perilous.)

I've also cracked open the case on Dragon Quest VIII. The voice cast is great, the graphics are gorgeous for a cel-shaded title, and the score is entirely ORCHESTRAL! No MIDI soundtrack! Woah! In fact, the back of the box lists the credit: 'Music: Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra'. Now that's crazy good. This one looks like it's going to take a lot of time to plow through though, so it's staying on the backburner for the time being.

I've yet to remove the shrinkwrap from Ratchet & Clank.

On an unrelated tangent, did you know Ligers actually exist?

I managed to pop in Jak 3 and play for about 20 minutes today on my parent's mammoth of an HDTV set. Earlier in the month, I went down and like a sucker, forked over the cash for the Sony Component cables so that I could see what 480p gaming looked like, but none of the games I owned supported 16x9 or progressive scan. Fortunately, two of the titles I picked up over the weekend (Ratchet and Jak) both support progressive, so I was looking forward to seeing what marginal graphic improvement there was to be seen. And I must say, I can't quantify how much a role 480p played in swaying my disposition, but Jak 3 is really quite slick. It was running in widescreen at what had to be 60fps, and contained the most animated, fluid-looking characters I've seen in a game - ever. The opening in-engine cinematic in particular was really fast and looked more vivid than some CG animation (short films) I've seen. And the it's got great sense of humor too... I repeatedly died in the first challenge arena, and after the 3rd or 4th death, Daxter (the "annoying sidekick", pictured right) unexpectedly took over the screen and in disgust shouted something to the effect of "Okay, that's it! Call the director, I want out!" Said taunt turned out to be a surprisingly effective motivator, too.... I definitely look forward to getting down and sinking my teeth into this one.

I'm attempting to redesign the personal website again, this time from scratch. I sketched out the layout last night and re-created it with some tweaks in Photoshop, but I'm still a little iffy about the cohesiveness of the design. At the very minimum, I plan to relaunch it without the straight-up feed reprinted from this LiveJournal; I just put on a new paint of coat to reflect my latest obsession and there isn't a compelling reason to have two copies of the blog/journal anyway.

I went ahead and joined YourMusic.com, part of the infamous BMG Music Club (you know, get 12 CDs FREE) which seems very much like Netflix in that you fill a queue of albums (published by one of the Sony BMG labels, of course...) and every month you get the next CD in your queue for $6 with no shipping costs and no contractual obligation (and no mailing of 'suggested' CDs that you have to return in order to avoid getting billed for). It seems like a pretty good deal, and I made sure to read the fine print and cancellation terms and it looks pretty legit. So I'm looking forward to getting the first album in my queue, Rockin' the Suburbs. (I've convinced myself that the Hedge soundtrack is the best CD I've purchased in years, which is also indicative of how stale my music collection has grown... [On a sidenote, it's only $8 on iTunes with an exclusive track that I didn't get, which really is a steal.])

This is the last post I'll make about the film for a while, but if you enjoyed Over the Hedge at all, you really ought to check out the Behind the Scenes subsection of the official website. (And skip the rest - it's fluff for the kiddies.) They have some amusing video interviews with the entire cast, and what I personally found more interesting, a good number of images of the hand-drawn storyboards and conceptual art used in the making of the film. This isn't something I normally get excited about, but there was really some quality work done here in the pre-production stage. And there's even a bit of insight into the adaptation of the film from it's comic origins, as well a bit of the philosophy behind it all:

"If there is any message here, it's 'Boy, do we have it good.' Our world of instant food and amazing consumer electronic pleasures is a dazzling wonderland. But the other side of that message is that those things are really distractions in life. It's wonderful to have our choice of junk food or video games or hundreds of channels at a moment's notice, but what our lives should be centered around are family and friends, who can't be replaced."

As someone prone to... unhealthy obsessions, it's good to be reminded of that from time to time. (Oh and uh, DreamWorks... you can mail me my check.)