Finally, school is over for the summer; I have no more bazillion-word essays to type and more time for myself. Which means I spend more time on my Wii, DS and the Internet.

I started my new summer schedule by trying out a game. Being low on cash, I figured I'd rent something. Since all copies of Madworld were gone, I grabbed No More Heroes. I'm glad I rented it: not because it's bad, but beat-em-ups aren'texactly my thing. It's a great game overall. I liked the presentation and swordplay, but the job-hunting and repetitious assassination contracts were somewhat of a bore, especially with no "Retry" option. The boss battles were fun, though, and the ending was a bit too perplexing. Still, it made me look forward to the sequel.

Related to NMH: while booting the game, you see Grasshopper Manufacture's logo, right? I noticed something rather interesting in it: it says "Video Game Band" and "Punk's Not Dead." I found it rather curious to find this in a video game, but knowing Suda51, I started to look into a deeper meaning. Having experienced only Killer7 and NMH, I think I could see where he's going with this. One could say that both games are experimental and out-of-norm to a certain extent, and aren't those what punk is about? That as a video game band, as opposed to developper, he and his team would rather try something new and defy what is considered standard in a video game? Can punk apply to video games? I think that's plausible.

Cerainly made me think about game development in a different light.