Where is Nathan??

02..Feb..Sat..Nanjing -- Beijing.........8:05 - 9:50
02..Feb..Sat..Beijing -- New York(JFK)...13:00 - 13:30

06..Feb..Wed..New York (LGA) -- Memphis..11:30 - 13:30

13..Feb..Wed..Memphis -- New York(LGA)...13:55 - 17:40

21..Feb..Thu..New York (JFK) -- Beijing..15:30 - 18:00
22..Feb..Fri..Beijing -- Nanjing.........20:20 - 22:10

More later.

It’s snowing!!! I know it’s probably been snowing in other parts of the world for months or whatever, but I haven’t seen snow since I left Arkansas so this is pretty exciting. And sorry about the picture, but it was the first thing I could snap from the roof.

After Lukas’s challenging remark about Mass effect, I thought I would give it another shot. And I think I’m ready to admit my mistake. As far as sci-fi based RPGs are concerned, Mass Effect is the best thing I’ve ever played. I suppose KOTOR is the only thing I have to compare it to, but this game is huge and beautiful!

Let’s talk about what’s really good.

Character creation was pretty basic up until you get to design your guy’s (or girl’s) face. I think I spent an hour trying to make him look like me. There’s about 1000 options to customize from eye color to cheek bone structure to size of nostrils. It was totally unnecessary, but pretty fun.

The Graphics are incredible. It’s one of the best looking games on the 360 that I’ve seen. The whole environment seems full and lush and while you are running around all these different planets and moons and crap, the backgrounds are rich detailed murals and don’t seem like just some static graphic that was thrown up at the last minute. The characters move in a life-like manner instead of looking like fleshbots. I even gawk at the loading screens and just say, “wwwoooowwww”. The game looks great.

The immensity and details of the game were a little overwhelming. There’s like a million planets to explore! And the navigation system is pretty swank too. In fact for a while I kind of ditched the mission and just went around the galaxy checking out planets. They all have names and Earth relative gravities and there’s all these alien races with histories. The amount of details actually might make the list of things that I don’t like about Mass Effect. There’s a lot to take in.

So if the game is so great why did I not like it at first? Let me tell you.

Now I may come off as a simpleton for saying this, but there was a lot or reading at first. The game just started a little slow at first. In fact for the first 3 hours or so I was a little bored. Like I said after I got a ship and started cruising around the Milky Way, it started getting a lot better.

The other problem I had (and it seems I’m not the only one), is that for the longest time I didn’t know how to play. In fact today, after finishing off my 10th hour of play, I realized I didn’t know how to melee attack. I just started pushing buttons randomly to try and figure it out. After pushing every combination on the controller, I gave up and had to look it up on the Internet. Same thing happened to for ammo upgrades. Now I guess this really says a lot about the strength of the game, because any other game that didn’t show me how to play or had controls so complex I forget them an hour into the game would get dropped like a hot potato. Anyway, I guess that’s enough.

But I want to say thanks to Lukas for calling me out, I successfully wasted half a Saturday waxing Geth and hacking open creates and terminals.

After spending most of the Christmas holiday trying to convince myself that Mass effect is worth playing and rolling up the universe in Beautiful Katamari, I didn’t leave much time for the Orange Box. I did make it through half-life years ago and I thought it was pretty good, but I didn’t get my panties in a wad over it. Half life 2 looked pretty interesting, but I only got the Orange box to try and see what the big stink was.

I read this and it was totally lost on me, but then this comic peaked my interest, and so this week I thought I’d give Portal a spin.

I’m here to tell you that rarely ever have I played such a perfect game. I’m so confused by the experience that I find it hard to put it into words. I really can’t say it any more perfectly than “first person puzzle comedy”. I think what makes the game so fun and interesting is the fact you go into it with no expectations and no previous information. The game just starts with your character waking up and being barked at by a ominous voice to do stuff. This is becoming a pretty popular way to start a game (Half Life 2, BioShock, Call of Duty 4 … even Halo started with you popping out of cryosleep), but its really the only option for keeping things suspenseful. Well, I can’t really tell you what the game is about, because that would ruin it for you. But I would suggest you rent it.

The game is really short. It’s almost like a mini-game. It’s two to three hours long, so pretty much a half Saturday or a long weekend session. But really that might add to the perfection. If the game was any longer then I’m sure it would lose something. So really the fact that I bought it for a dollar certainly adds to the brilliance of it. If I had paid 60 bucks for it, I might feel a little cheated (although I haven’t really gotten into Half Life 2 yet and I haven’t even tried out Team Fortress), but you in the US might have to suck it up because Portal is a game that every human should play at some point.

Well, I’ve been back to workfor the last few days but I feel like I’m still asleep. The last few weeks were the most tiring Christmas break I’ve ever had where nothing happened. I didn’t really go anywhere or do anything but sit around and hang out with friends, but still I feel wiped out.

Christmas was pretty good. We ended up having Christmas dinner in a bar that had cooked a turkey, ham and mashed potatoes. A little over priced, but it’s Christmas after all. I have to say it didn’t really feel like Christmas. I tried so hard to get into it with the decorations and listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies; but somehow it just didn’t feel like Christmas.

I guess this is because I’m looking forward to visiting the US, that this break before the end of the semester just felt like a long weekend. It’s like I’m still looking forward to Christmas since I haven’t seen my family in a long long time and Christmas = being with family. I’m not sure.

Anyone on facebook can see that we got a visit from Ashley (from Hangzhou) for New Years. She even brought a friend (by the name of Danny). It’s funny, but I’ve never really done the touristy stuff in Nanjing until she came. We went and saw a part of the wall (Nanjing the longest standing city wall in the world) and I finally got to the Nanjing Massacre Museum (I’ll talk about that during another post). All in all, like I said, a good long weekend.

In other news, I’ve renewed my lease on my apartment so I will still have a place to sleep. The reason that is exciting is because one of my demands for signing for another year was get a better internet connection. I’m going to pay twice as much, but I’ll get getting a 2 Meg connection with the stupid Active X control. What does that mean? It means I’ll be able to get on Xbox live from my house!!! And I’ll be able to get a switch and leave my computer connected all the time! I will be like having real internet again!! I’m pumped.