Sunday, March 25, 2012

Don't Stop Believin'

My original plan had been to start out by spoiling the ending of Journey by revealing that, at the end of the game, when you take off your robes, you find out that you are Steve Perry, and it unlocks Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) for Rock Band. Catching up on a podcast today, I heard someone make a similar quip. Sadly, I didn't have time to come up with anything else.

The biggest gripe I've heard about the game is that it has a $14.99 price tag for an experience that lasts about two hours. Honestly, for me, that convinced me to buy it now rather than wait. I've liked thatgamecompany's other work, but it took me quite a while to get all the trophies out of Flower. Knowing that even I could quite likely get through Journey in a single playthrough (which is apparently the recommended way of experiencing it) increased the appeal dramatically. Between quarter end activities for work, getting ready to move in less than three weeks, and trying to minimize getting out of bed in the middle of the night, there wasn't a two hour stretch to sit down in front of a game. There's an outside chance next Sunday, followed by near certainty while Shannon is at Norwescon.

A while back, I made a spreadsheet of the games I intend to get around to playing, and Journey will be ignoring that. From the spreadsheet, I'm slowly working through Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City as probably the last game I'll finish this year. The next game on the list is Dragon Age: Origins. Considering that Red Dead Redemption took me over 9 months to finish (and an extra 5 months to get the platinum trophy), I think it's safe to say that anything wanting my attention will have to be either bite-sized or run on Android. Maybe I'll get "lucky" and they'll release an interoperable version on the PS Vita. At this point, I think that'd be enough to get me to pick up one. I don't see it happening for much less than that.

This week's adventure: Moira and I heading to California for a business trip. She wants to go to Disneyland as well, and even though she was able to tell on a map that going from where we'll be to Disneyland is a longer trip than from home to Canada, she still wants to go. Hopefully seeing her Grandpa will be enough. For me, I think it'll be catching up on reading, sleeping, and maybe getting our finances in order as we prepare to deal with having two mortgages.

I can't let a post with this much Journey content go by without including my favorite web comic in recent memory.

2 comments:

  1. Love the comic, and you're doing a lot of Daddy-daughter trips. Do you take her car seat or just rent one when you get there? I want to take T to the Bay Area alone but the thought of wrangling the carseat makes me very scared.

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  2. We've done this three different ways.

    Taking the car seat with us means an extra $40 for checked baggage (assuming you're paying for bags), a big bulky thing to wrangle from the parking lot to the terminal, and then from baggage claim to your rental car. If you're comfortable with curb-side baggage check, the hassle can be reduced, but these seats were not made to be carried. Plus, you're pulling it out of your car when you get to the airport and having to put it back in when you get home.

    Renting the car seat means you get the fun of a puzzle as soon as you arrive, trying to get a new-to-you car seat into a new-to-you car. Since you're probably travelling at a time when T isn't screaming for bedtime as soon as you arrive, you should be up to the challenge, but it's an extra amount of time you have to account for beyond what you'd normally include for getting out of the airport. Plus, you're paying something for the privilege.

    The best way we have found is to not need the car seat. We pulled this off with the Disneyland trip, taking cabs to and from the park, and doing our one non-walking trip on the bus. Depending on what you'd do on your Bay Area trip, it's a possibility.

    For the trip this week, we'll be taking a car seat. We're cheating a little, though. Because the Porsche car seat wasn't available for the first year I owned the car, we have a spare car seat, and we've found it a lot easier to take that one on the plane, leaving the regular (somewhat bulkier and heavier) car seat in the car, making life that much easier at the beginning and ending of the flight.

    So, if you have access to a spare car seat, that's the way to go in my book. Short of that, I'd say renting a car seat along with the car is the way to go.

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