It took a couple days of hard work, but things have smoothed out
considerably around here. The site is loading faster than ever, and we
haven’t even finished tweaking things yet. Pretty soon we’ll have the
webpage loading before you even open your browser. All you’ll have to
do is think about it.

I delved into The Movies a little bit yesterday, and I liked what I found. Actually, I should say I liked the potential of what I found.

At face value, it’s very much like any other sim game out there. Build
stuff, make money, unlock other stuff, build that. And micromanage the
happiness and a few other staff of all your employees. It’s in a movie
studio setting, so that adds some novelty to it.

I started the campaign, because I wanted to get a feel for the controls
and how things worked. It starts you off in the 1920’s with a healthy
budget and a detailed tutorial to get you running.

The first couple of scripts you get are written for you. After that,
you can hire people to write scripts, and you choose the genre, but
they are still doing the writing. You could actually play the whole
game in this manner, and it would remain nothing but a sim game. Which
is not to say that is a bad thing, and that may be exactly what some
people are looking for. But that’s not why I got the game.

I wanted to fool around with writing my own scripts, and directing the
films myself, which I haven’t gotten to yet in the game. That’s the
part that seems most engaging and unique about the title, to me anyway.

Also been playing a bit of Soul Calibur 3, which unfortunately I have
to give a “meh” reaction to. I played Soul Calibur 2 till the wee hours
o’ the mornin’. But SC3 just doesn’t seem to do it for me.

The VS. mode is pretty good. But the single player options just seem
lackluster to me. Maybe I’m just in a place where I’m expecting more
from a fighter than crappy story and circular arenas with boring “ring
outs”.

I’m really looking forward to Dead or Alive 4 becuas the franchise has
been very good about providing naturalistic arenas to fight in. They
have boundaries, but they don’t feel like boundaries.

You know what I really want? A new Power Stone
game. I would be seriously invested in seeing another game in that
franchise, or even a game with a similar concept, come to the next gen
consoles.

That shit would be pretty hot.