end radio silence

Apologies for the recent radio silence; there hasn't been a tremendous amount to report here from SFTC headquarters. But here's what I've been playing of late:

1. Final Fantasy 13: I'm on Chapter 11, which is where the game supposedly starts getting interesting - or, at least, stops being so rigidly linear. I can absolutely attest to that last point - I basically had to restart the entire chapter because I misunderstood the map. No longer am I walking down a narrow corridor; I am wandering a gigantic expanse filled with monsters as far as the eye can see. If you so choose (and you should), you can do "missions", which are basically side quests, where you have to seek and destroy one particular monster. Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize that the location of your mission's objective had a different map icon from the main story objective; and so, after I finished Mission 1 and started Mission 2, I found myself in the middle of these weird caves, getting my ass kicked over and over and over again, not really understanding what I'd apparently done wrong. Fortunately I had a save file from the beginning of Chapter 11, and now I understand what's going on.

I'm not quite sure how much I'm enjoying it, but I don't really see myself playing much of anything else for the next little stretch of time; I'm not really as excited about the new Splinter Cell as I thought I'd be, and if my GameFly Q is to be believed, I'm not going to get excited about anything until mid-May, when Red Dead Redemption, Alan Wake and Blur come out. Speaking of which...

2. The Blur multiplayer beta is out, and I gave it a whirl last night, and HOLY SHIT it's awesome. It's basically Mario Kart + Project Gotham Racing + CoD's XP system, and that means I am fully on board.

3. Played some of the recent Mass Effect 2 DLC. The Firewalker stuff is OK - someone else described it as a tutorial for something you'll start using full-time in ME3, which sounds about right. And then last night I did the Kasumi DLC, which was a pleasant enough diversion for the 60-90 minutes it took me to finish. I guess the coolest thing about it is the new section of the Normandy that's now finally opened up.

4. I cooled off a little on GTA4 PC, but only because I've been using my computer for other stuff of late. I'm considering buying Dragon Age for it, though, if Steam ever puts it on sale. I didn't like the 360 version and it's basically just taking up space - my PC can run it, and that's supposedly the version to get anyway...

So, that's what's been happening over here. There may yet be more actual content soon to come - another fake podcast transcript, perhaps.