It would appear that, despite my ramblings and talent to procrastinate, I am somewhat competent at being productive. After the last tour ended I came home with expectations of unhindered laziness (if that makes any sense). Seems that I’ve entered a phase in my life where if I’m not consistently doing something productive I feel as if I’m wasting time.

Let’s not lose perspective though. I’ve gamed like crazy (as you’ll see below). However with that and the management of the trailer monster that I’ve taken on, I’ve been able to self manage myself without going nuts.

(I’m also trying again to not become a lethargic sack of crap, and last week I started jogging. Yeah, ME.)

My little web comic is starting to take some sort of shape. The more I work on Alfredo Afro the more it just feels right. Ideas hit me at random for blogs and comics and they’re just getting funnier and funnier. I’m also noticing that my blogs receive more attention than the normal bi-weekly comics do, which doesn’t exactly surprise me thanks to whatever experience I built up with Pluh.com‘s reviews and other crap.

These are just fun to create.

Speaking of, I’ve considered “rebooting” pluh.com a few times. It gets traffic thanks to the Daily Dumb over there which I’m determined to make the main (and possibly only) feature of the site. Just thinking about trying something “new” with that site almost sends me into a depression. Anyone I ever bring it up to seems to not care, or their eyes glaze over with copious amounts of foam emerging from their mouth-cannons, and I CAN’T BLAME THEM.

I wouldn’t declare it dead, but I wouldn’t try to “reboot” it either. CPU is doing a great job with the Daily Dumb and I wanna keep that going.

With Alfredo Afro, at least I know if it fails it’s because *I* failed. I’d have nobody else to blame. Did I give it my all for Pluh.com? I can’t say for sure. At least now with AA I know it has a clear purpose and I don’t have to hope that others do stuff without me having to “motivate” them. Heh.

Alright. Enough. Game review time. Don’t get used to this, because 2012 is looking quite a bit more bland than this year.

(I’m STILL playing Skyrim. WOAH.)

Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360)

This review sums up how I’m feeling about modern shooters in general, and GOW3 is no exception.

I can’t play this game for more than an hour without getting bored. Seriously. The games looks great, sounds great, was well designed, etc, but… I don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s just me being a picky jerk or if I’m losing my metaphorical cogs. I can definitely tell that many, many months of time, energy, and talent went into this game because it is obviously very well produced.

But like the Call of Duty single-player games (which I’ve never actually finished because I get SO FUCKING BORED), there’s a moment when I have to pause the game and think, “is this really worth my time right now?”

In all the Gears of War games, here’s the general strategy:

1. Take cover
2. Shoot bad guys
3. Go to step 1 if you get injured

The challenge here is to not fall asleep while playing. There were a few awesome, memorable moments where you’d have to use strategy to kill the baddies, such as this one giant creature that you had to aim for the eyes, but it’d vanish and burrow around. At the end of the first Gears, the last boss was a BLAST to fight because he required real strategy.

The dialogue and story are all excellent. I just wish I could fast-forward through the actual gameplay to watch the characters tell the story.

That is bad.

5 out of 10 glowies.

Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)

Ahh, good old Zelda.

This review also sums up how I feel about this game. So what if I referenced another review? YOU SHUT IT.

Now all the positives from a Zelda game are there: Puzzles, swordplay, strategy, visuals – it’s all there. What isn’t there, sadly, is – and I really hate to say this – is real originality. I know, I know – BLASPHEMAWR!

Gametrailers summed it up; this feels like I’m going through the motions.

• Find dungeon
• get thingy
• use thingy to kill boss
• Next dungeon

I know, I know – this is what Zelda is all about. It is fun and I am enjoying it. I just wanna see Link doing something ELSE for once rather than the same ‘ol, same ‘ol.

To compare, it is in my top 5 Zelda games and I’ve played ‘em all.

Definitely snag this if you love yourself some Zelda!

9 out of 10 Vanishing Princesses

That about does it for me. I need to do some sketching and… well, I don’t wanna go and fire myself for incompetence.