And suddenly I feel super extra old. Happy birthday to me. 19 is such a landmark year, huh? Heh, yeah right. Won't be all that special 'til me and $rauburger get our act together and trip up to Canada for a few days.

Anywho, that's enough birthday stuff from me. What's my life been like lately, let's see ...

I decided to take another venture into the Games On Demand feature on Xbox Live Marketplace. I got Bioshock from it a while back, and it treated me well, so I thought what the hell. This time around I opted for Dead Space, and while I did finally get to start playing today, there is a story to tell before I go into that.

It all started two nights ago, making it Monday the 10th. I had been turning this sudden urge to buy Dead Space over in my head for a few days, and on the way home from work it occurred to me that I thought I had seen it featured on the Games On Demand list a few times. Sweet, I went and dropped twenty bucks in my checking account, went home, logged into the XBL Marketplace, bought twenty dollars' worth of Microsoft Points, and thumbed my way over to my game. This is great, I'm just gonna buy it now, let it download overnight, pick it up in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I found out that you cannot use Microsoft Points to purchase Games On Demand. I should have known this, I've done it before, but now I have 1600 nonrefundable points in my account that I need to spend, a situation I have never foreseen. Were it not the only money I had on my card this would not have been so frustrating.

In the grand scheme of things, not all that big a deal. It is what it is. Go with the flow. Next day I drop another twenty clams onto my card, go and buy the game, all is swell. I calculated that the download would take about 6 hours (ugh) and I had to be at work in 4, so I was just gonna let it ride and when I got home it would be all set to go, ready for me to play.

Awesome.

I leave for work, toil away for a few hours, accidentally pass out on the toilet for 15 minutes (best nap ever), get back to work and even head home a few minutes early. Walk in my room, I hear the Xbox is off, so it must have finished its background download. Sweet. Look through my list of downloaded games, and lo and behold, it's nowhere to be found. Perplexed, I pop open my active downloads and discover that it mysteriously stopped itself as 55 F%^&ING PERCENT. I'm completely thrilled to see this and I skip happily away as it resumes its download. It is now for whatever reason moving even more slowly than when it began, and long story short I ended up going to bed before it is finished.

This morning, I wake up and listen for the gentle but labored whirring of my 360's fans, and was pleased to report not but silence. Here we are, about 36 hours from the initial attempt and I finally get to play my game. Sweet victory, you are hard-earned.

Now onto the game. I'm not through it yet (thank goodness. As much as I love playing games I don't want to be one of those people who blows through a game in a day) so these are simply my impressions. At first, the game is very creepy and, to me, quite scary. I can't really watch scary movies, so this is a pretty big step for me. After about 2 hours the desensitization (hey, spell check is convinced that's a word, that's good enough for me!) pretty much fully set in. I'm about 6 hours in now, still loving it, loving the creatures and the suspense, the story actually isn't half bad, and I'm thankful it's not scaring me like I thought it would. I actually have the mental space to enjoy it now. There are still a few moments that get the heart racing and the muscles tense, but the effects are no more long-lasting. The balance of these elements feels great.

I heard somewhere that the team who designed the necromorphs, as the baddies are called, drew inspiration from pictures of car crash victims in order to achieve a certain amount of gore and disfigurement before they added the special little monster flavor on top. This is sort of gross but to me very intriguing. Whatever they did, they did it well. The monsters are freaky and disgusting and quite unique. The shift from the all-powerful and, by now, muscle-memory headshot kill to the dismemberment system adds just another small bit of challenge to an already curiously charming gameplay smoothie.

I remembered hearing about this many moons ago, before the game's release, but the lack of a traditional HUD was implemented so smoothly and skillfully that I didn't consciously notice it until I was about three and a half hours in. I won't go into detail, but it is quite beautiful the way every element is laid out on our silent protagonist. It, along with a great atmosphere and fantastic sound work, really helps create a very powerful sense of immersion, despite the fact that the game is played from a third-person perspective.

But look at me rambling! This turned out about a million times as long as I originally intended. Go buy the game. Go buy an Xbox. It's fun.

Quick closing quips: I hope to write more and more often, I'm discovering I like it. So if YOU like it, I just may have more for you soon. Always something interesting happening in Ryantown. A friend of mine introduced me to a delicious strawberry dish, I will post a picture as well as a description. Maybe I'll get the recipe, but it sounds simple enough. And I think that's it!

Thanks for reading,
love and light,
Ryan

PS: Why are there no strikeout and superscript tags??
PPS: I realize now that I have an interesting tendency to switch between the past and present tenses that would probably get me a slap on the wrist from a teacher. It's just how I write, I guess.