Friday afternoon tidbits

I'm hoping to get to some more Left 4 Dead this weekend, but first I have to face some other mindless, ravenous hordes when I go Christmas shopping. Just need a tree, really, since I do most of my shopping online, but what's worse than crowds of people who all want something? These days you can get trampled just for getting too close to the door at Wal Mart. Onto the links!

-Garrett Martin has written a pro-Mirror's Edge post, partly in response to what I said about it earlier in the week. He makes some good points, and while I wouldn't argue with the legitimacy of what he says, it still doesn't match up at all with my experience with the game. Meanwhile, Daniel Purvis also points out that the time trials may as well be a different game altogether, which is again true and which again doesn't match up with my experience. I will say this: the time trials are significantly more successful than the story mode as far as accomplishing what I thought ME was trying to achieve.

-Gary Hodges does a good job of negatively reviewing LittleBigPlanet without condescending or diminishing it. You could very well read that piece and know that LBP is the game for you. I also instinctively shy away from the kinds of proclamations that Gary quotes John Davison as making, that LBP "could be one of the most important game releases of the year." Or it could not be. Who knows? Not me, not you, and not anybody -- not for a couple of years, at least.

-Mike Walbridge accepted Shawn Elliott's challenge. Mike's perspective is interesting because he's looking at it from the point of view of an editor, as well as a writer. I'm lucky because I don't really need to worry about maintaining a consistent editorial tone with other people, or even worrying about how my scores mesh with that of the other Phoenix writers. That sounds like it would be a real challenge.

-Hey, Hardcasual is back. Sweet. And it gives me a chance to tenuously segue into talking about my favorite subject: myself. Apparently Chris Plante has been writing for UGO's Games Blog, alongside UGO editor Russ Frushtick. Russ and I lived in the same dorm at college, and although I knew at the time that he wrote for UGO, I didn't realize he made a career out of it. That's the second time this has happened, the first time being when I realized that Leigh and I were high-school classmates. Small world. (Oh man, and after writing this, I see a post on the Games Blog that mentions Qore host Veronica Belmont -- yep, another college classmate! Sheesh.)