Jared Rea

I knew that in my adventures I would be joined by a four-legged companion. A year ago, watching Peter Molyneux give a presentation on his canine NPC, I peered into a cynical future where I would be crusading across the land of Albion, joined only by a dog, for whom I’d feel nothing.

“Fantastic,” I’d say. “Now I don’t actually have to look for buried treasures.”

By journey’s end my hero, sealed in will and skin-tight hot pants, had sacrificed her world for the life of another. But the one thing she wouldn’t — couldn’t, even, was love.

Well played, Sir Molyneux.

Conducted my first one-on-one interview with Shigeru Miyamoto this past week. Pretty ballin’.

Upon entering his hotel room, we were greeted by the man himself, slapping down a rhythm on his Wii-remote-turned-bass-guitar to a K.K. Slider favorite. Sitting down for our interview, our first question related not only to Wii Music, but also to his greatest measure of success as the king of casual gaming.

How is the wife-o-meter doing these days?

The questions were mostly of the family oriented variety as I was more or less a surrogate for GameDaily’s new parental site, PlaySavvy. Still, it was great to sit down with Miyamoto and chat about games.

On a different note, a few people have asked me about my hiatus from my blogging here. My slacking off is actually a very good sign. It means that I’m quite busy these days, so expect some very positive news very soon. I’ll try and sneak something else on here in the meantime.

Time spent watching gameplay from Star Wars: The Old Republic: 60 seconds.

Time spent locked inside Lucasarts with Bioware employees to discuss said 60 seconds: 3 hours.

Answers received: Not a whole lot.

When Star Wars Galaxies is eventually laid to rest, it will be remembered for one thing: dancing. You could spend your entire in-game life just dancing the night away, styling wookie hair or creating blue milk for all your friends. You could live the dream of a moisture farmer! Of course, Bioware wasn’t saying anything beyond, “this MMO has a lot of content.” Now you know why we decided to write this feature.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Bioware turns out, of course, but to be honest with you I’m not all that excited. If you remove the Star Wars characters from the screenshots and told someone it was from a new World of Warcraft expansion, they’d probably believe you. Jokes on the visual aside, they have a lot of fascinating ideas.

When I wrote this feature earlier in the week for GameDaily, I still believed. I believe that maybe, just once, we’d get a decent flick based upon a video game favorite. I was wrong. So horribly, horribly wrong.

For gamers, the thought of their favorite characters becoming Hollywood stars conjures such horrific film failures such as Super Mario Bros, Double Dragon and any Uwe Boll flick. This time, however, early trailers and promotional materials have struck the right chord with fans.

Well, that much is still true, am I right? Anyway, enjoy the piece.

Honestly, what do you think I said about Rock Band 2? Somehow, I managed to withhold my, “zomg game of the forever!!1″ comments for this Escapist review.

For the kings of rhythm gaming, is this sequel enough to satiate those who have surrendered their bank accounts in the name of downloadable content while being inviting enough for those on the fence between these near $200 dollar sequels? Hell yes, it is.

I’d like to offer a small addendum: when I wrote this review, the merchandise creation tool was nowhere in sight. This has since changed along with the photo tool, as seen on my Flickr. The Rock Band website is still not particularly functional, but at least it’s coming along.

That was a close one. Biden was absolutely brilliant, in case you missed it.

I was feeling quite in the mood for some survival horror when a download code for Siren: Blood Curse popped into my inbox. A few hours later, not so much. The Escapist has my review.

“Tolerate” is probably the best way to describe one’s experience with Blood Curse as the actual horror elements make it worth suffering through at length. The village of Hanuda is a fantastic setting for a game such as this and the environments are some of the most unsettling since Silent Hill 2 so many years ago.

Arne brought a counterpoint to my attention from good ol’ Jenn Frank. I agree with pretty much everything she has to say, expect for the whole “Siren is the best survival horror game ever” part.