Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Life or Something Like It

So Friday I came down with "The Strep" as the kids are calling it these days. A quick trip to the clinic and a z-pak later and I'm doing fine. Plus despite evil illness I went down to Chicago on Saturday to see "Taming of the Shrew" with my aunt and uncle, who have season tix at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I saw their premiere production a few years ago (A Midsummer Night's Dream) which was possibly the best piece of theater I have had the pleasure of enjoying in my life. Shrew was similarly excellent. Willow and Mandie would be pleased to hear that it was set in 1970's Italy, with the only changed prose being about the motorcycle Petruchio rode to the wedding instead of a knackerd old horse.

Lately I have been spending my spare time playing Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, an excellent RPG from Nippon Ichi, released here in the states by Atlus. The danger here, for those who were present in Chester during the 2-week Kingdom Hearts debacle, is that Disgaea has character levels up to 9999, and about 600 hours worth of hidden extras and alternate endings, as well as a game+ feature. It's been all I could do to resist skipping work for the past week to stay home and play it. I almost didn't go to Shakespeare but I decided I wouldn't be that guy (even I have limits) and ripped myself away for Saturday.

The coolest thing about disgaea is that you can go to the "Item World" inside every item in the game and level it up. Everything from the smallest potion to the most powerful sword in the game has 100 levels of item world with increasingly difficult enemies to defeat, and each level you defeat adds to the stat of the item. So if you take a really weak sword and level it to 100, it becomes a lot more powerful than most of the weapons in the game. If you manage to do it to one of the good weapons you become godlike.

Also there is a Dark Assembly, a kind of Congress of evil monsters, who you can petition to make the game harder, open up secret areas, etc. But unlike the real world, if they refuse you can beat them into submission and force them to pass your resolution!

Suffice it to say, it's a lot of fun. Now, back to work.

Deuce, have you had a chance to try this one out? It's so good it's like chocolate-dipped chocolate with chocolate jimmies and hot fudge to Lee or Bent.

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