Brad Gallaway's blog

After getting about 2/3rds of the way through inFamous, if not more, I basically wrote my entire review in about forty minutes.

I'm going to keep pushing forward and finish it off, but I'd be very surprised if anything in this last section really changes my opinion.

Besides inFamous, I'm putting the finishing touches on my upcoming Crimson Gem Saga review, I've got a few more entries to do for my "Best of Community" feature, and as if all that wasn't enough, I've been toying with the idea of doing the main review for Fallout 3.

So, I told myself I wasn't going to plunk the money down after playing the InFamous demo on the PlayStation Network, but I did. It's just that I've been playing so many RPGs lately that I was starting to burn out of gaming altogether, and I definitely needed something action-oriented to get the juices flowing again. I was weak, I admit it.

So recently, the discussion of innovation versus presentation has been popping up in regard to various titles. Specifically, how should a critic view a game that makes no attempt at breaking new ground, but instead focuses on delivering a very polished and playable experience?

Of course, I think the answer certainly depends on who the critic is and what their personal philosophy is composed of. It really couldn't be any other way, could it? That said, I do think it has to be taken into account that the games industry is a large one, and there are players of all stripes within it.

Keeping this in mind, I think it can be safely assumed that there is room enough for games that push the envelope, as well as those who are content to stay sealed within it.

Been sort of scattered with the gameplay lately… at the moment, I'm still working my way through the excellent CaveIn: Miner Rescue Team on Community, in addition to the also-excellent Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2—Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon on PlayStation 2. How's that for a title?

As for the rest of the game tidbits I've got under my belt, I'm saving them up for tomorrow night's podcast recording. We've been on hiatus for a few weeks since both Tim (the show's host) and I each had newborn sons enter our lives, but now that things have settled down a bit, we're getting right back to it. If everything goes according to plan, it should be posted before too long, and I’ll have a link to it here when it's ready.

Since the super-nifty dee-luxe Devil Summoner 2 package (scroll down for the pic) got me in the mindframe for extra bonus-type stuff, I thought I'd put out word for the soundtrack and art book that comes with a pre-order for Atlus' Knights in the Nightmare for the Nintendo DS.

In between projects at the moment, I spent most of my game time today (which was not much) checking out the various Community games I've downloaded over the last few weeks.

Every Wednesday when I check out the new stuff on Live, I make a point of looking at the new Community offerings and queue up the trials for a day just like today when I want to play something, but I'm not quite ready to commit to something substantial. Anyway, I think I tried something like ten or twelve different titles, and only one of them was worth a damn.

Called Trino, you take on the role of a small, aquatic-looking life form that creates triangles in space. The point of it is to trap enemy creatures within the triangles to earn power ups and move on. It's sort of half-puzzle, half-action, and it has a very polished and "complete" feeling to it. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I paid for the download happily and I'll be getting to it in short order.

Spent a little time with the Valkyria Chronicles DLCs, Enter the Edy Detachment! and Behind her Blue Flame.

Edy wasn't bad. A little short maybe, but it starred most of the offbeat characters I liked in the main game. Seeing more of them was a good thing.

Blue Flame was kind of pissing me off… it's neat to be able to play as the enemy side, but one big issue I have with Valkyria in general is that a player's performance ranking is based solely on speed of completion and nothing else.

After a long pregnancy that seemed like it would never end, my son Whittaker Rana Gallaway was born on May 4.

Vital stats: 8lbs 1oz, 20.5 inches long, and his skills are Charm, Nuzzle and Sleep. Not bad for a level one character, eh?

Now that he's out of the womb complete with ten fingers and ten toes, the wife and I couldn't be happier, although the cliché about being insanely tired after a birth is true. Not only is the process physically rough on both mother and child, babies run on an opposite clock—sleepy and quiet during the day, fidgety and needing extra attention at night. Although it probably made a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective back when the species was still avoiding sabertooth tigers and giant cave bears, it's not much of an advantage these days.

Although I'm not up to full speed, here are some tidbits to tide regular Coffeecola readers over until the next update…

Bayonetta. I get that the main character is a witch who has guns on her shoes, but it's a little impossible not to think that this is a recycled Devil May Cry with a gender switch and a storyline that seems to have a little bit of absurdity to it. Call me crazy, but after watching the storyline trailer available now, I couldn't help but sense echoes of God Hand. Anyone agree?