The Week In Review

Blogging comes to a near standstill when I'm on vacation. Or staycation as the case may be. Especially when is a busy staycation. Officially, i was back to the grind yesterday, so we now return to our irregularly scheduled shenanigans.

Didn't get a lot of painting or 40k gaming in to be honest, as there were a ton of distractions -

1.) The aborted trip to the US army ordnance museum. Canceled on account of cat illness. Techno (the cat) went from chronic hairballs to an allergic reaction with his medicine to not eating. Add in foot long phlegm trails from his hatred of the liquid Benadryl and a worrying lack of poop and it just wasn't possible to leave him all alone for 24+ hours. On the plus side, he's healing up now, eating regularly and heading back to his normal craziness.

As it turns out, the trip to the museum can be done in a day (although its a bit rough), so its still in the cards for the future.

2) Super Mario Galaxy 2. Totally killed my free time. Its almost like I need a support group for my addiction to power stars. Overall, I like the first Mario Galaxy game better - the world design was much more interesting and there was a definite novelty aspect. That being said, the sequel is very, very good. And, if I'm honest, a better game-play experience.

The bosses aren't recycled, the difficulty curve is certainly steeper but better balanced and the bonus 120 stars aren't just you redoing the game with a green shirt on. The 2nd player co-star mode actually lets your buddy (or significant other) do something besides collect star bits (they can actually kill enemies and stop projectiles - WOAH!). A lot more variety in levels too and most of the gimmicks are no where near over used. Oh, and the fetch quests aren't nearly as mindless.

But still I like the first Galaxy better. I've been able to nail it down to level design. However, not in the sense of how difficult or well put together the challenges in the level in - something the sequel is way better with. Rather in terms of world creation. The first Galaxy had much more expansive levels that just begged to be explored and ogled. Galaxy 2 - not so much. The levels are much smaller and more focused. Though there ends up being a great deal of variety in setting and more tightly engineered challenges, the levels in Galaxy 2 never grabbed me in the same way the did in the first game.

3) Burn out from the BoLS challenge. Eating, breathing and shitting red tank for two weeks really sucked the wind out of me in terms of painting. I'm just not built for speed when it comes to painting. Rushing what would become my entry by a week or more and still maintaining my insanely high standards was very rough. I was working up until, literally, the last hours before the deadline. It got me in the contest on time but sucked out a portion of the enjoyment i get out of the process. Overall, kind of a stressful couple of week leading up to the deadline. Which is the exact opposite of why I paint.

All that being said, it was a valuable experience that got me a pretty ballin' tank well ahead of my initial 'wait and see' schedule. But, it also got me some stress related burn out. Thankfully, Mario was there with some power stars to take the edge off. Once BoLS posts the results, I'll talk about them in more depth.

Ze Future - I think I'm down to the last remaining star in Galaxy 2 and I'm starting to feel the painting itch again. I'm currently working on some Hive Guard step by steps for Hoagy which should go up as soon as I have a bit more progress done and then its off to Eldar land for a while. Probably a long while since I'm still 3 tanks, 3 vypers and 1o guys short of a whole army. Not to mention the additional $300 dollars in stuff I've identified as things I'll need to achieve the thin veneer of 'options' for my list that the Eldar codex affords me.