What Was I Saying...?

So I was informed by Seifer yesterday that the high-def redux of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for iPhone/iPad got quietly released into the wild without them actually TELLING anybody, including those of us who were rabidly waiting on it and had been searching the App store every few weeks saying "Is it out yet? Is it out yet???"

This new release, besides having HD graphics, is also tablet-native so you don't have the "scroll-up/scroll-down" thing happening constantly. It also has a little bonus feature called "Everybody object!" which allows you to type in your own objection and (theoretically) post it to Twitter or send someone an e-mail, in case you want to have Edgeworth tell your friends "OBJECTION! Graveyard Greg is a punk!" or something similar. (Heh, heh.) I say "theoretically" because as of last night I couldn't get it to post, but I didn't try real hard, either.

This release also has the first three Ace Attorney titles included, whereas the original port release only had the first one. I'm excited about this, because not having ever had one of the little Nintendo gadgets (or whatever platform PW originally came out on, I freely admit this is an area of vast ignorance for me), I never got to play any of the PW games before the iPad port. And I love, love, loved the first one.

Phoenix Wright reminds me in all the best ways of the old Sierra point-and-click adventure games (particularly Colonel's Bequest and The Dagger of Amon-Ra): intelligent, funny, quirkily-yet-beautifully illustrated mystery puzzlers. There are one or two more buttons it could push to make me go "Squee!" but not many.

So! If you have an i* device, go get it! It's awesome. :) And in honor of this major release, have this:



-The Gneech

In order for my mom to have more to do in the rehab place than stare at the walls (or, God forbid, daytime television), we are going to give her my iPad. But I will miss it terribly, so we went out yesterday and picked up a new one for me.

I was surprised to discover that I didn't actually like the retina display that much-- at least not when used to render "realistic" video game graphics-- and the reason is the same reason I don't like the "Soap Opera Effect" setting on hi-def TVs (and am very bearish on the high refresh rate being touted as a feature in the upcoming Hobbit film). I just don't like things looking like video. Yes, it's "crisp" and "clear" but it's also ugly and makes everything look cheap. The grainier resolution of film images creates a more pleasing aesthetic look, like watching a moving painting.

Still, the new iPad is definitely faster than the previous one and the particular model I bought has more hard drive capacity, so that'll be handy. But I gotta say, I'll miss the original iPad. It's sorta like your first car. :) Getting my iPad was a big event. Getting "a new iPad" is just a swap-up.

In other technology news, I've been trying to get all of my many URLs under one roof in terms of DNS providers and hosting; this seems to be mostly resolved except for gneech.com, which is still randomly screwed up for some reason. So there will be much calling and poking of providers later. Tonight I also have to do that AC registration that I tried to do yesterday but couldn't without my PA tax paperwork. :P I would do it today, except I forgot the PA tax paperwork again this morning, because mornings are crap. -.-

Finally, in not-technology news, a new comic project (that might actually be a paying gig) materialized at me yesterday. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but I am at least intrigued by it. I don't want to go into details just yet because it's all in the "preliminary negotiations" stage right now; but it's a collaborative effort with another creator I've worked with before. It could be quite cool. :) OTOH, it would require a level of commitment that I don't know I can give it with my life in its current state, and I wouldn't want my ego to write checks my body can't cash. ;)

We'll see. :)

-The Gneech

Trying out a post on the iPad from the comfy chair in the den. While theoretically this is "my" chair, in practice Dasher uses it more than I do, as I'm usually at my computer. Gonna try a little iBook/Kindle reading while I'm here, as well. This may open up a whole new world of sitting comfortably around the house for me!

-The Gneech