As a nice close to the year, and an early Christmas present, Sony has taken a big dump on gamers in the departments of imports and homebrew development. Thanks Sony for making this holiday season everything I had expected from you, and so much more!

I won't even talk about the PS3 fiasco which was nothing surprising to most of us I think. What I will talk about is how Sony has managed to crap on us in an unprecedented new way that I didn't see coming at all.

News seems to trickle down to me slowly these days, probably because I'm not working for a video game retailer anymore, don't have any magazine subscriptions, and I don't scour the net in the wee hours of the night. As a result, I seem to be over a month late in finding out about the demise of Lik-Sang.com at the hands of the ever watchful and wrathful god Sony.

Others have reported on this event much sooner than I, such as Steven Mansour and a great article by Cosmo at The Hanover Collaboration. Other reactions were even less polite, with Goosezilla telling Sony what she really things about them. The official Lik-Sang announcement can be read on their site here.

It would seem that one morning Sony woke up with a particularly nasty hangover from drinking too many souls-of-gamers cocktails. It gazed upon the land of the gaming industry, and inadvertently swatted with its mightly lawsuit filled hand at the first nuisance it found. For some reason this turned out to be one of the largest import gaming etailers. Hong Kong based Lik-Sang had served the hardcore gaming community for years with hard to find items, and apparently the god Sony was not pleased.

I find it particularly amusing that prominent Sony employees were among the list of Lik-Sang customers, "and [include] Ray Maguire (Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Alan Duncan (UK Marketing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Chris Sorrell (Creative Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Rob Parkin (Development Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited), just to name a few," (Lik-Sang.com).

It would be difficult to gauge the effects of this aggression on Sony's part initially. Some of those effects I felt directly this morning. You see, Lik-Sang not only provided the gaming community with merchandise, but supported the community with additional donations. Homebrew devs have benefited from Lik-Sang in many ways I imagine, though I can refer to one case specifically. When DCEmu announced its Dream Coding Grang Prix 2006, one of it's major prize donors was Lik-Sang.

As some of you may know, and as I have posted just recently, I have been working on a homebrew project that would have been entered into that competition. I don't care about the prizes really, and I don't even know that our chances of winning any were very high. The point is that I was looking forward to it, and it was yet another way to bring the independent developer community together. Something Sony clearly has no interest in.

On November 27th, DCEmu announced that the Dream Coding Grand Prix 2006 has been cancelled, in part due to the death of Lik-Sang. This is a sad announcement, as I'm sure we were not the only people working on a submission for the contest. Heck, I don't even care if there are any prizes. I would be happy if there was just a contest so we can get all those people together and showcase their work. Unfortunately, unless other sponsors can be found, which hasn't happened thus far, the competition will remain cancelled.

So thanks a lot Sony. You've managed to impress me with your legal muscle flexing yet again. But don't worry, I won't abandon my project just because you've won this battle. Your personal "War on Game Terror" won't stop us. Some day your reign will come to an end.

Graphic novels these days, well, intrigue me. A little searching here and there on the web always yields something interesting, and today it's this. Go on, give it a clickie. You'll be pleasantly surprised. ^_^

Maybe someday, my own graphic novel will get done.

The respectable blogging community Metro Blogging has been touted by Violet Blue for some time. I have enjoyed Violet's writing, and I think the writers on Metblogs do a great job. If you check out the Metblogs complete city list, you will find that it is a select list indeed. No cities from my state are on that list, which is perhaps because no one from this state wants to write for them. That would be unfortunate if it's the case (though maybe not all that surprising).

I don't know exactly what the criteria are for Metblogs to choose what cities are included on their list, but that list is not all that long to be sure. You might imagine my surprise when at the end of that list, under "other," we find the name Azeroth!

I had no idea that Azeroth was now considered a metropolitan area. I have nothing against that black-as-the-devil's-hoofs game called WoW, or those who play it. Wait, that may be a lie. But I certainly don't have anything against those who choose to blog about WoW. After all, I'm doing it right now, so that means it's okay.

What does strike me as peculiar is that it's included on Metblogs as one of their big cities. Maybe it's because half the world has their brains plugged into WoW, sucking the life-juice out of them. Maybe that's why there's no shortage of people who want to write about their "home away from home at home."

Whatever the case may be, I felt a slight tinge of dissapointment when I realized that Metblogs included virtual locations. Seems like there should have been a place for Lineage in there too. But I suppose that's in the past now. At it's peak Lineage was at about half of the total WoW subscriptions. Now WoW is above seven million, and the rest of the MMOs out there can't even touch that (statistics via MMOGChart). Maybe it's just me, but I'm a little more afraid now.

As of late I haven't posted much. Gomen ^_^. Thanksgiving pounced on me and I've been working on a little project that I can't really talk much about just yet. Not until the official announcement anyway. I've been doing a fair amout of art for it, and I've now gotten into the sound effects and music as well.

Once things are out in the open I'll be able to share more of the artwork and music with everyone. What I can say is that it's a collaboration that will be entered into the Dream Coding Grand Prix 2006. It's pretty exciting, and so I will just leave you with the above image as a sneak peak.

In other news, Minitokyo user candy-chan's got a great new wall up on her blog, Revolution Apparel. Meanwhile, Matt's working on his flash game project, which is shaping up nicely at End of Heroes, and I look forward to the finished result.

When I came back from Odiyan this summer I was aching to get into some painting. I had a sketch in my book of this character, the lovely blue-haired anime girl, and had been meaning to give her a more serious treatment on canvas. This was the first painting I put together since my return.

Not too long afterwards I managed to get it hung at a local Port City Java cafe, about two blocks away from where we live. I did forget to photograph it before hanging it up there and it wasn't until just this week that I remembered to go down there and take the picture. So here it is, With Open Eyes, acrylic on canvas. It's 16 in. x 20 in., so not as big as some of my previous work.

I've promptly uploaded it on Minitokyo and a new local art community website I joined up recently called This Is Viral. Ning. Check out the Minitokyo page here, or at This Is Viral. Ning here. I strongly recommend viewing the larger version for better detail.

As I wrote on MT, my intention as of late is to bring more focus to individual parts of the anime face in an effort to discover what makes them so compelling to me. By focus closely on one element at a time I hope to discover how it can generate its effects alone, without necessarily being part of the entire face.

Granted that this piece is a slight step back in terms of focus, especially if you compare it to Tears. However, the focus on the eyes in this piece still shows their effectiveness to me. Rest assured, more images are to follow in this exploration.

Very nice little anime flavored morself of J-pop that we have here. Miho Hatori graces us with some excellent vocals (albeit in non-native English) and wonderfully entertaining animation in this music video for Barracuda. Also seen on Anime.com, where you can read Nicholas D. Kent's full review. Video courtesy of da Tube.

When I first got together with my then-boyfriend, Life was Swell. I wanted to impress him with my 1337 cooking skills, and made all sorts of nummy-nummy's to fill his belly. Home-made pizza, lasagne with three cheeses, betyar fogas, you name it, I cooked it. He never complained (so he claims). I, on the other hand, remember when he was not so enthused about my ingenious (but not so tasty) combo of mac'n'cheese, hot dogs, and zomg couscous. It was not a good meal. Even I did not like it, but we ate it anyways. We won't even mention that polenta disaster.

I made cakes and pies and tarts and cookies. These days, it seems I make more ramen noodles and bean-like things than anything else, which are not always appetizing, but indicative of our broke-as-a-joke status. Do not fear, there will come a time when I will feel the urge to pick up a cookbook again and actually "Cook", but that day is not today. Enjoy your hot dogs and ultra-pasteurized cheese, puwheeze! That day may be closer than you think.

Welcome to my personal rant of the day. (Rant rant rant.) I am a player of an MMOPRG, and there are times when my enjoyment of the game is severely decreased by Surly Teens. You know what I'm talking about... They're the ones who can't control themselves in public, and give you a similar feeling as using a public restroom. There is just not enough soap in the world to get yourself (or the surly teen) clean again. My enjoyment of any game greatly depends on its replay value, and I tend to dwell on those games which never end, such as The Sims, or WoW, or Morrowind.

When I encountered the Surly Teen, I knew that it was going to end badly when he/she started badgering. (ZOMG kid, you cannot have that item that luck of the draw gave to me for a pittance of its worth...ahem.) He/She just would not let the issue drop, and carried on a rather one-sided argument for 45 minutes, which consisted of whining, pestering, and calling me an asshole by the end of it. (At the final boss, this kid kept distracting me with his/her belligerance and was certainly not focused on helping the group.) Now, I may actually be an asshole, especially in situations like that, but it's awful rude to call someone that, especially when you've just met them. This is the kid that you dread meeting in the mall, clerks...beware of the Surly Teen. Rant, rant rant. And then..../ignore. ;) I suppose I could have handled the situation differently, but alas, I lack patience occasionally.

I was recently browsing through Independed Gaming blog, as I have done more than once lately. I was very happy to find this great resource with tons of new information on free and/or independed games. Not too long ago they mentioned a new game in development by Sigma Team called Alien Shooter 2.

I recommend trying the demo, which is currently available for download from Sigma Team's site. The game features a great old school feel which harkens back to the days of Abuse, and Crusader. Though this type of game has been unsuccesfully duplicated before, i.e. Restricted Area, Alien Shooter delivers where others could not. Prividing an almost Halo like feel in the demo, white maintaining the fun factor of plowing through alien hordes Diablo 2 style.

The action element of this game is a lot of fun and had my adrenaline going a few times. I especially recommend finding the secret area in the basement which allows you to man the gun turret...and take on a HUGE wave of enemies.

Character building thus far seems well thought out, with different possilbe builds. Maybe. The demo allows for fairly quick skill learning and leveling, but that may be just to show how it works. I hope the final product allows for more varied builds, and a longer lasting build time. As much fun as it may be initially, having a maxed out character a third of the way through the game just doesn't do well for game balance.

Other than that minor concern, there are a good number of items to equip yourself with, different weapon classes, as well as armor and accessories. I think that this repertoire of items will make the game interesting as long as it is expanded when the full game is released.

In terms or presentation I had no complaints. They could have made the game using 3D models instead of sprites I suppose, but who cares! It's all good and still looks good. If it were not for the sprites, I'm not sure that the game would maintain the fuzzy warm feeling I get from it that reminds me of days gone by. The graphical style works well, and the sounds complement the experience with some nice techno music breaking up the action.

So cheers for nostalgia once more! Alien Shooter 2 promises to bring you back to the days of top down turmoil, isometric insanity, and smachingly good old-school times. Keep an eye on this one.

We've been following a fabulous project by Amy Winfrey for several years now, and having watched the Thanksgiving Treat of Making Fiends, I felt compelled to write a short piece about the Fiendish Fun. As I understand it, the whole endeavor began as a final project in Amy's graduate work in animation, and has evolved from there. Haplessly Cute Charlotte is the unwitting victim of her nemesis/"friend" Vendetta in these episodes here. I've personally always wondered what the creator of this neato project thinks, what inspires the series and how she does it! I keep meaning to make a fiend to submit in the fiend contest that happens yearly, but I always manage to forget... I also keep meaning to buy a fiendishly cute t-shirt from the fiend store, but I keep forgetting to do that too... Perhaps a fiend should pop up on the 'ole computer, squeak out a "RAR" at me, and remind me to just do it!

One of the perks in living in a large downtown apartment complex is that you never know what matter of goodies will appear daily next to the garbage bins. Recently a headboard caught our attention; it's got those art deco curves and signs of wear that we love so very very much. I wonder what else we'll collect over the years from the sidewalk fleamart, lol. Here's a pretty pic of our latest nab. I <3 mongo!!

Long before our blog went up, and probably long before I even knew what a blog was, there was Violet Blue at the forefront of the blogging revolution. Or at least that's how I see it. Of course I'm biased, because Nikki and I are both partial to Violet's content.

It probably started when she began podcasting Open Source Sex, which is a fantastic educational resource that is funny, informative, and also very entertaining. Since then we have become more familiar with her site and blog at Tiny Nibbles, and I know that I read her new posts just about daily.

In a way, I suppose that Violet Blue inspired me to put up our own blog. Someday I hope to meet the Queen of Blogs when I'm in her neighborhood again. In the meantime I will try to pay closer attention to Violet Blue's Customs of Blogistan.

She lays down some of the rules of blogging that should be followed if you have integrity as a writer. I suppose if you don't have integrity, then you can just do what some of these other "journalists" do and rip off info from bloggers (or just fail to write what is true), as pointed out to us by Violet.

I am still quite new to blogging, so I guess I'm learning. I'll try to do better in the future in keeping these courtesies in mind. Sometimes I feel that since I'm not really posting news a lot of the time, that not all these rules apply in my case. I have a feeling Violet would possibly correct me on that though.



In any case, we love Violet Blue, and this is a little tribute to her (featuring Nikki). I try to spread the word about Violet's work whenever the opportunity presents itself, as her contribution to the scene is a great one.

Update: Violet's Comment -- She was gracious in dropping us a link on her blog and even went so far as to say that our little imitation/flattery picture above "kind of makes [her] all blushy and want to hide." Aww, don't hide Violet. It's okay, you can come out and play. Feel free to stay with us any time you want to have a beach vacation on the East coast. Catch Violet's full post here.

My connection to art has been very lean these last several months. I am never happy when such droughts come around, but I am happy when I can see their end on the horizon. Such a time is now. I am happy to say that my working days will now have a pinch of art tossed into the mix, and hopefully that pinch will aggregate into a larger mass in the near future. I intend to take that mass, knead it, and let it rise and eventually throw it in the oven.

I will be starting to contribute at Three Hounds Gallery next week. Conveniently located in downtown Wilmington, Three Hounds initially struck me as having a more traditional flare for the local impressionist, expressionist, and mostly objective and comfortable work. My recent observations have shown this to be false on account of exhibitions that endeavor to breach the lines of contemporary abstraction and non-objective themes. One example of this is the current show of work by Wayne McDowell and Jeff Chase, with paintings that represent the importance of the process over the end result. Those who know my own work better may recall that such has also been my focus for many years.

There are a number of things which I look forward to in this professional relationship. I look forward to being a part of an art gallery once again, as it has been too long I think. I look forward to getting to know the local art scene all the better, now that I shall be interacting with it on a regular basis. I also know that there are few things which inspire one to create as being surrounded by other creative minds and their creations.

So here's to hopes for the future, Three Hounds Gallery, and what has the promise of being a fruitful relationship for all those involved.

First, there was Omikron. And it was good. Then came Indigo Prophecy, and it was good. Thus Quantic Dream surveyed its domain, and it was good. Or so I hope. It must be pretty good, with Indigo having received more acclaim than Omikron, for they now have a PS3 title in the works, as well as a greatly anticipated sequel on my part.

This year's E3 saw Quantic Dream unveil their next gen PS3 project Heavy Rain, and the video looks impressive. That's just great. Now I'm going to have to get a PS3 eventually. Just what I need, another video game system.

Heavy Rain did get me excited. But not nearly as excited when I read this announcement by Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in which he states that they have started development on Omikron 2, now known as Karma! I couldn't believe it. First they bring us Indigo, and now we get an Omikron sequel. My excitement was somewhat curbed when I read further and found that "you shouldn't expect this title anywhere before 2009." Yikes, that's three years away!

I was still sure it would be worth the wait. So I looked through a few other articles and found another announcement, made more recently (October), indicating that Karma would be supporting Ageia's PhysX engine. What does that mean to us? Thus far, only that we need to drop between $200 and $300 for a PhysX card. The engine is so young that it's just about impossible to tell whether it's going to be worth anything. Currently titles supporting PhysX seem to have minimal differences. Not sure that it's worth the investment.

When Karma comes out, however, things could be entirely different. So I think it's a little too early to determine whether PhysX is going to be useful or not. In terms of any details about Karma, there is nothing yet. I imagine that it will probably be a lot closer graphically to the opening video in Omikron. Whatever the case, I don't think we'll be complaining about the graphics this time as much as last time.

The more interesting part of the announcement came right at the end, with a different report on Karma's release date, stating that the game is "expected to complete development sometime in 2007 when it sees release on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3." Now, 2007 sound a lot better than 2009, but whether that's a reliable date or not is unclear.

What I think is clear is that the PC version is going to be the best choice out of all these, and I am sure that it's going to absolutely rock! And you know what else rocks? Quantic Dream, for giving us a sequel to this incredible game, that's what.

Following my excursion into Indigo Prophecy, I said I would have to replay Omikron now. Well, I did. I wasn't kidding. Bet you thought I was.

Yet I have a confession to make. When I first played Omikron on the Dreamcast, I never beat it. Yes, I know you must be disappointed. Especially after me telling you how awesome it is and how much I loved it and all that. I stand by all those things, and I think I had played it enough to say all that. In fact, I had gotten very near the end and then fizzled out on my conviction to finish.

I think I've done that with a lot of games. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I loose interest in beating a game, because if I see the ending then that's really the end of it. Few games will give me a reason to come back to them. That is, unless I never finish it. So maybe it's my way of trying to trick myself into going through the whole game again.

But I digress. The point is, that I enjoyed Omikron so much, that I didn't want to finish it, so that I could play it again. That's possible. Whatever the case may be, I started from the beginning. I actually managed to pick up a PC version of the game a few years ago for cheap. Now I was able to enjoy it even more.

Since the game is about seven years old now (I can't believe it, I must be getting old), I was able to bump up the graphics settings to max, and run it at 1600 x 1200 resolution. I have to say it looked a lot better than the DC version on a TV, but that should be obvious. So in terms of graphics, I think the game has actually aged quite nicely. The only thing that betrayed it's age were the textures really. Yes, the models were certainly low on the poly count, but that didn't seem that big of a deal. I think if the textures were upgraded to nice high res versions, it would make a tremendous impact. I even tried to weed through the game directory to see if I could locate the texture files and edit them, but that proved to be impossible. The tools used for the game may have been proprietary.

It's not like the graphics bothered me. I truly enjoyed that unique flare which Quantic Dream has become known for in my mind. The scifi design of Omikron seemed somehow European to me, and was even echoed in the French film Immortal based on Enki Bilal's work. Something about the French that seems to reoccur in their science fiction maybe.

When the game was first launched I loved it for its innovation. It tried to combine the genres of adventure game, fighting game, and FPS all in one. The result wasn't entirely spectacular as was noted by others, but being the fan of all those genres that I am, I was not deterred. When a game tries to do too many things at once, it is not likely that it will fully succeed at being any of them. Still, I thought Omikron did come really close to doing so. I actually found all of those aspects sufficiently enjoyable. Not as much on the Dreamcast, but the PC version made all modes much more playable, and especially the FPS mode.

One of the primary difficulties that the Dreamcast showed were in continually loading the large environments of Omikron. Loading pauses occurred every time you went through a door, which some drove some players nuts. After a while, I actually managed to ignore that part for the sake of my sanity and enjoyment of the game. The mind is so trainable you know. None of that was an issue on the PC though. With my recent upgrade, and my two gigs of ram, large environments were a breeze. There was rarely a pause during any portion of the game. This showed how well the Omikron engine was designed to make environment transitions as seamless as possible. A big deal for its time, when long load times were standard.

Other slight glitches did occur from time to time. A few lockups and such. The absence of a PC patch is a slight disappointment, but at the same time a testament to the diligence of Quantic Dream in putting out a finished product. Unlike so many games that are rushed out and need a patch because half the users can't even install it.

Omikron still possesses a strong story, though perhaps not quite the equal of Indigo Prophecy. I must admit that I was less enthralled by the plot this time around, but only because of knowing most of what was going to happen. The first time I played Omikron it was quite the opposite. The intrigue was high and many twists in the plot served to keep things interesting. Themes similar to Indigo Prophecy were present with a heavy focus on the occult, as well as your character's role in fulfilling a prophecy. Overall, the scope of Omikron was much greater than Indigo, and the game was also a great deal longer.

Sometimes the length of Omikron seemed to be working against it. A lot of puzzles were present, with most of them story driven. But the second half of the game did provide puzzles that seemed more arbitrary and felt only like chores to be done in order to progress. I remember the days when games like Myst had me playing with pen and paper to decipher the clues and drawing diagrams to figure out the right sequence of symbols/buttons/whatevers to align/push/whatever. I found myself back in that mode a couple of times. I think I had more patience for that back then than I do now.

So you're probably wondering whether I finished Omikron this time. The answer is definitely yes. I got to the point where I had last left off, and continued straight past it, never looking back. I was in fact surprised that I was so close to the end last time. I was glad to see a few new environments that I didn't get to before, and I made it to the final showdown with Astaroth. The big bad boss who is going to eat all of existence for breakfast. My first try to get him I had to figure out how to do it. Then I died. My second time I knew how to do it, and tried to actually pull it off. I still died. I think it wasn't until my fourth try that I finally managed to defeat the evil dude. He went down, I was the hero who saved the universe, and all thanked me for my courageous deeds.

A little trite I suppose, but it was still nice to see a proper old fashioned denouement. The interesting thing about Omikron, which its characters will tell you time and again, is that it's not really a game. They tell you that Omikron, the game, is a portal to the actual universe where Omikron is. And that you the player, or your soul, is what inhabits the bodies of the characters you go through in the game. That's actually one of the major parts in Omikron, being reincarnated into different bodies in order to progress. And you have two objectives in Omikron. To defeat Astaroth so that (1) you can save their dimension, and (2) so that you can save your own soul. At the end, the remaining characters who helped you along tell you to come back any time and visit their dimension using the game as the gateway. That part of the experience is not often seen in games, and I found it to be refreshing. I almost had a Labyrinth moment when David Bowie's character said good bye ("Yes, should you need us...").

My final thoughts about the experience are very positive. As I have said many times, I have always had a soft spot for the art of Omikron. Not to mention that David Bowie did a number of the songs for the game. Combine that with fantastic ambient music which I would listen to any time, a great story, good characters, and a very unique and diverse set of ends and means to achieve them, and you have the rich and grand world of Omikron. Few games can boast of having these elements, and this is why I look forward to whatever Quantic Dream will bring us next.

Shortly after the Dreamcast launch in 1999 I became a huge fan of Quantic Dream. They released Omikron, which was not especially liked. It had its flaws, and people always focus on those first it seems. Still, I loved the game and spent a ton of time on it. The lack of Omikron sales put a damper on the success of Quantic Dream however, and it seemed as though the just went out of the game developing business for good.

I didn't hear anything about Quantic Dream for a long time. One day I was checking in the shipment of games at Gamestop, during the days when I was one of their minions, and pulled out the interesting looking PC box of Indigo Prophecy. Being always intrigued by interesting cover art, I flipped the box over, and was impressed by the design and screens of the back cover. But when my eye wandered lower down and saw the Quantic Dream logo on the bottom I just about flipped out! I think I must have gotten a little too excited and gotten some weird looks from my coworkers at the time.

My wife bought me Indigo Prophecy just a few days later. I can't remember, but I guess I must have really annoyed her with my jubilations. I installed it in a flurry of disc swapping and started playing it. I was hooked right off the bat. Unfortunately, we were getting ready to move right around that time, and then the holidays came. And then I left for CA. So, that means I didn't get a chance to actually enjoy it much, and not for very long.

But, now that I was back and things are somewhat settled down with us, I figured it was about time to whip out the good old Indigo Prophecy again. This time I was determined to keep at it. And I did.

Once more, I was hooked pretty quick. That's just one of the wonderful things about this game. The story is excellent and the pace is right. It gets you in there and it keeps you in there. The shorter chapters keep the story moving well, and it has been a long time since a game had me hankering for more plot. The developers really wanted to create a game that had a more cinematic feel, with high emphasis on developing good characters and a strong visual style. Indigo Prophecy was even awarded an honorable mention for Gamasutra's Quantum Leap in storytelling.

The musical score was created for this game as if it were created for a film, and that is exactly what David Cage requested of the composer Angelo Badalamenti. Each main character has their own musical theme, and their motifs come up time an again to create a vibrant and emotional auditory experience. The music contributed to the great atmosphere that the art maintained, and further had me wanting to keep on keeping on.

The animation was very well done, with all the moves having been motion captured. That's probably more than most games get for character animations. Combine that with smooth character controls, and Indigo Prophecy has a well polished package. What made the control scheme even more interesting, however, was the Shenmue inspired on screen interface. This control method is adaptable to every action taken by the characters, with makes it very flexible. The developers tried to minimize its intrusiveness in terms of visual impact as well, allowing for the experiencing of the action sequence in question.

To be sure, I loved the game. I loved the art, and unique style, the music, and the interactive elements. After finishing Indigo Prophecy I did realize one thing though. Not all is well in the land of Lucas Kane. [SPOILER WARNING -->] As most games, this one too has its short-comings. The primary negative aspect that I believe should have been done differently is the final set of chapters in the game. David Cage himself agrees that he "made the mistake of not devoting enough time to the last hour of the game," as quoted from an article on Gamasutra.

During one of the latter chapters, a strange turn of events takes place between the two main characters, Lucas and Carla. One minute Carla is chasing after Lucas to get him behind bars, while Lucas is trying to save the life of his girlfriend Tiffany. Next thing you know, Tiffany is dead, Lucas is undead, and Carla is in love with Lucas. They have a child and live happily ever after. Now, that would in fact not be entirely unbelievable if it weren't for the very limited amount of scenes devoted to these events. This plot could certainly be weaved into the game, but only if adequate time was devoted in developing the characters motivations towards these ends. As it stands, however, it was a little too sudden to be plausible, which created a slight anti-climatic feelings at the completion of the game. Though it does set things up nicely for a sequel.

Overall, Indigo Prophecy is still a ground-breaking game. I still loved it. And I would still recommend it to anyone who hasn't had the good fortune to play it. Often times when I play a great game, I am inspired to create some artwork for it. This time I made a wall for it which you can view here, via Minitokyo.

And now that I am on this adventure game kick, I think I'll have to replay Omikron...