xenoveritas.org

This is, yet again, an attempt to write down a policy that's been in effect for quite a while.

Anonymous comments all go to moderation. Logged in users can post without waiting the week or more it takes for me to get around to approving new comments (I'll get to it - really).

All comments are subject to a "lameness filter" that will reject comments based on programmatic filters. These are basically an attempt to block spam without requiring a captcha.

However all comments are subject to deletion based on the following:

System:	Wii
Tentative Score:	3 (OK)

I haven't actually finished the game yet or bought any of the optional addons, so this review might change in the future.

In short, it's a very simple city sim in the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles setting. You play as a 10-year old king who uses the power of Architek (the magic to summon buildings) to rebuild a destroyed kingdom.

So iTunes apparently decided to crap out and destroy its own library.

What does it do? It crashes on loading its XML backup, overwrites it preventing me from reimporting it, and then proceeds to wipe my iPod clean.

Leaving me with absolutely no way to restore my playlists.

You'd think they could import the metadata from the iPod, but of course not. It just deletes everything.

Thanks a lot, Apple.

I do want to start off by saying that I'm not really saying this would be a good idea. But the idea of being able to beat the stupid out of Yoshi with Sephiroth is just too good an idea to pass up.

Descriptions after the jump.

Ubuntu 8.04 is out!

I've been using it for a while on my work Linux computer and my home Linux laptop. The work machine's been running basically flawlessly. The laptop had some issues with the wireless adapter, but thankfully that has been resolved.

On the laptop side, 3D graphics effects are now supported. I now have Compiz running on both machines, which is kind of cool. (And since I've mucked with the window closing animations, closing windows is much more exciting than it used to be. Burn and Beam Up are cool. Uh, anyway.)

You might notice that the site is green today. Well, as it turns out, this site is literally green: Dreamhost is a "green" hosting provider:

Of course, it's only "green" due to carbon offsets, which are sort of a silly thing, but for the sake of claiming to be greener than I really am I'll leave that argument for a later day.

System:	PSP
Score:	2 (Poor)
FF7 Fan Score:	4 (Good)

This game was obviously created for Final Fantasy VII fans. If you didn't obsessively follow every plot point in Final Fantasy VII the story will be confusing. If you don't remember what Jenova is or how Cloud relates to the Sephiroth clones, you might want to find a story guide before playing.

If you never played Final Fantasy VII and have no plans to, then forget it. The story will make no sense, the cutscenes that exist solely for Final Fantasy VII fans will mean nothing, and the gameplay just isn't fun enough to make up for this.

No, Nintendo has not announced that there will be another Smash Bros. - in fact, they've come closest to announcing the opposite.

However, it's still fun to think of characters that should be in the next Smash Bros.. The rules here are fairly simple: the character must have appeared on a Nintendo console as a major character. That's it: the character need not be a Nintendo character, and in fact, by now, probably shouldn't be since Nintendo has kind of hit the bottom of the barrel when it comes to new characters.

System: DS
Score: 3 (OK)

Yet again, this is another game that I played and enjoyed but I'm giving a 3 to anyway.

Unlike Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations where there was literally no new game play elements, this game contains some new things. Unfortunately, it's either underutilized (a couple one-off forensic minigames, some of which are different from the ones in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney) or downright obnoxious.

Sony has announced that, in an effort to meet their March sales target, no one should bother buying a PlayStation 3 until June 12th.

In a posting on the PlayStation blog, Sony explained that with the April release of the Dual Shock 3 controller and a new PlayStation 3 bundle on June 12th, there's simply no reason to buy a PS3 until then.