The Marvelous Patric

dear blog,

It's the penultimate day of 2008. I'm starting to look ahead and thinking about some of the arbitrary changes I can make to celebrate the change of the year that occurs several weeks after the earth has passed its furthest point from the sun. One change is I'm shutting down marvelouspatric.com at the end of january. I never use it any more. I'll simply make it a redirect to freaksnsqueeks.com for now. I'm trying to figure out just what that website should do now, if anything. When I started it, it was where I put everything, all comics and whatnot that I did back in college. Now, i do a daily and a weekly, each with their own url, and there's no pretty way to display them both on one page. I'm thinking it may serve best as a blog, but I'm blogging here and at freaksnsqueeks.com anyway. If there was more of a community around my comics, I'd focus it there.

My puppies are doing well. They were at the daycare during xmas. dexter has a bit of the stomach/digestive issues. dixie is okay, tho.

xmas went well. now there's all this snow. and it keeps coming! and i'm supposed to take the nephews to see bolt tonight, but if this weather keeps up, that may not be a good idea. which would be very disappointing for them.

the red drum on my new guitar hero drum stopped working. i called them on friday and they're sending me replacement drums. but i just got the email with the shipping label to send them the old drums now, so i don't know if this means they _just_ sent it today or it's going to arrive today. man, that'd be sweet if it did. i really want to have the drums for new years. worst case scenario, i guess i could buy the new rockband, but i really didn't want two sets of drums and the new guitar hero drums work with the new rockband.

wow, i have very not-serious problems in my life. or at least, the ones i share.

dear blog,

it's been a while since i've posted. i'm sorry. i can understand how that must frighten and confuse many a person who look to this blog as their only source of Patric-Centric information. "Is Patric okay?" these people wonder, as they lay awake at night watching roaches climb the wall. "What latest events have befallen he, whom we look to in these trying times?" (  Fear not, faithful ones, and simply read on further. )

Current Location: work
Current Mood: excited

Dear Blog,

Today, I'm going to review the videogame, "Pac-Man" by Namco. The game was made in 1979 and became one of the most beloved videogames of all-time, nay, a cultural icon. I'm going to review this 1979 game by today's standards....

Review: Pac-Man (released by Namco, 1979).

The first thing I notice about this game is its graphics. I think I count less than ten colors used in its chunky, pixelated display. The characters are ill-defined. Pac-Man himself doesn't even have eyes! His opponents, the ghosts, however do, which makes this reviewer question this design decision.
As I begin to play "Pac-Man", I do note that the controls are very simple. There is virtually no learning curve here. There is a single joystick to control our hero where up is up and down is down, etc is etc.
The gameplay itself is a combination of a puzzle game and an action game. However, the action part of the game, avoiding the ghosts while running through the maze, feels more like an afterthought. The goal of "Pac-Man" is to collect all of the "pellets" in the maze. (I put pellets in quotes because due to the game's lackluster graphics, they look more like miniature versions of the hero than a different gameplay element.) The ghosts add to the frenzy of the maze. If you touch the ghost, you are "dead". The only time you can touch a ghost is after you've eaten the special Power Pellet. Then, you're supposed to chase down the ghosts rather than avoid them during a limited amount of time. The Power Pellets are scattered throughout the maze, so I advise strategic use of them. Still, this part of the game feels a bit tacked-on as well because the idea of chasing the ghosts runs counter to the rest of the games goals. Also, there isn't much of a warning for when the ghosts change back. The number of times I was about to catch a ghost only to have it end up catching me instead was insane!
When it comes to level design, "Pac-Man" gets the lowest score I can imagine! Every level is a complete duplicate of the first maze! There is always the same number of ghosts to chase Pac-man! No matter how high of a level you get to, the only thing that changes is how fast Pac-Man and the Ghosts travel through the maze.
As far as multi-player, "Pac-Man" makes a lame attempt. There is support for two players, but each player must take turns! While it would appear that a "high score" is used to determine the winner, there really is no direct competition between players. Players hoping to compete in the same maze with each other for the precious pellets, or players hoping for some co-op play will be sadly disappointed. Also, I couldn't help but notice a lack of support for online play. Considering how many characters the game has, four ghosts and Pac-Man himself, there could easily have been support for better multi-player, with other players able to control the ghosts and chase Pac-Man! A lot of it probably came down to the arcade version's choice to have only one controller on it. For shame, Namco! For shame!
"Pac-Man" is supposed to be the flagship for Namco, and as such you'd think that they would have put more care into it. Simple features such as better multi-player, unlockables in the game (the only unlockable is "more lives" when you reach certain scores),a game-save feature (you always have to start over at Level 1!) or even a level-editor so that players wouldn't be stuck with one maze over and over. Had Namco included any of those things, or online support, this reviewer may have been able to look past the terrible, jaggy, and undefined graphics. This game may be fun for a few minutes, but the lack of content will ultimately leave today's sophisticated Halo Generation looking forward to the next Halo.
Score: 3/100

Current Location: work
Current Mood: indifferent