Ninja Reflex

Go buy it. It’s on steam, 10 dollars. No, seriously.

Buy it.

Why? Well, let’s begin with the fact that the game is fun, and challenging, and trains all manner of cross useful reflex and thought process oriented skill bases.

Let’s move on to the fact that it’s well made, and pretty, and that it has a clear progression system based on the challenges you complete.

Let’s finish off with the fact that it includes a section for guided meditation.

What? That’s right. This game, available on the Wii, and cheaper for the computer, actually will help you set aside time to meditate. Now, you don’t have to. It’s not required by the game. But it is a good guided meditation induction, it has a silent meditation with a pretty background, and most of all, it is awesome that any game, for any reason, would include a meditation section.
I bought the game last night on a whim. You see, I’m an impulse buyer and, oh, yeah, 10 dollar games are my weakness.

So I bought it, whee, yay, and I opened it up, and it would only let me do two activities, and I thought to myself, “Huh. Well, maybe that’s just the way it starts out..” so I played through it, doing the Koi, and the curse inducing Hoshi catching flies challenge. Let me tell you, it took me all night to get decent, and all day to finish swarm sort, and I finished with one, count it, one whole second left.

And then it told me that to get more, I should buy the game. WHAT WHAT?

That’s right. It had opened up as the Demo the first time.

So that work I just put in, poof, gone, up in smoke. Cursing, I renamed myself. And then I clicked on Meditation, because I was pissed, and I wanted one good reason why I shouldn’t be yelling at someone.

Holy cow.

That’s the first time I’ve sat down and meditated in weeks, and let me tell you, it’s almost worth the loss of data to clear my head so completely.

Now, I’m still annoyed at the game, and so I warn you, Don’t do that stupid chopstick challenge, if it loads up as the demo. Quit, reload, whatever, but dear god, don’t be a sucker like me.

Just.. get it. Play it. It won’t replace C:SI, but I wholey approve.

EA

Block Animations and other Random Things

My thoughts were wandering as I watched Hero (Jet Li) and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be kinda neat if blocking were an animation, rather than a static pose? Wouldn’t it be really neat if blocking were only so ‘long’ and you had to time your blocks to the other person’s slashes?

Of course, this would completely break C:SI. Destroy it completely. Much like changing the way the kick functions, changing the way block functions would change the entire balance of the game. But I think it would be much more interesting if block had a length of time that it was active, but could be ‘chained’ together like kicks. Visually, it would be much more appropriate than just squatting with your sword in front of you, and becoming Invincible.

So, probably, I’d never ask for C:SI to do it…
but it would be neat if Some combat system were developed where the swords did it.

I hear (over on Robby’s Blog..) the Lindens might be fixing the KICK soon, so I may go back to sparring again soon.

I took a break after my frustration level peaked last weekend.

I’ve been struggling with a lot of things in my life lately, and the emotional stress has started to bleed into many of my passtimes. Go, C:SI, Even MMOs and CounterStrike become swiftly frustrating, and my performance suffers.

I’ve been trying to figure out a new balance, of spirituality, and physicality, after four long years of having very little spiritual balance, and very little emotional balance, I’m now struggling to figure out my new place in my own mind.

I don’t think I really have any answers right now. I need to take up meditation again. I need to get back into shape. I need to calm myself more often. But often I feel as if all this is beyond me.

I guess the answer is to set up a new daily schedule that sets aside time for all these things.

Anyway. I’m rambling. I’m going to close this post before I start talking about my love life.

EA