Sparky's Update - Thanksgiving

Heya folks, and welcome to a brief Thanksgiving-ish Sparky's Update, where everyone's a jive turkey and you can get your berries cranned any time. I have no idea what that even means, so let's move on, shall we?

I haven't been doing very much in terms of interesting gaming tidbits lately. I've mostly been revisiting Skyrim and playing far too much Borderlands 2, which I keep thinking I've finished with and end up revisiting a day or two later. I've been diving deeper and deeper into Disgaea D2's postgame content, which is still really decent, despite the lack of diversity or interesting new bonus characters. And finally, I've been inching my way forward in Radiant Historia, which is just as good as everyone has claimed, but my tolerance for long bouts with my 3DS is starting to suffer as my hands HATE holding the damn thing for more than a half hour at a time. Ergonomics, Nintendo. Look it up.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, even you non-American types!

iPad Corner

-Go try Lazy Ninja. It's free. Yes, it's kind of a simple physics based game. But damned if it isn't addictive. It's a basic Furby-meets-an-RPG experience, wherein you have basic limited touch controls over an unskilled ninja as he becomes... well... skilled. How you do this is the hilarious and addicting part. In order to improve his balance, you throw him through a basketball hoop. Sharpening his reflexes has you throwing watermelons at him. It's a riot.

The Rest

-Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves is pretty damned good so far. I'm about halfway through and it holds up as well as his prior two Locke Lamora novels. For those unfamiliar, the Locke Lamora novels follow the thieving Gentlemen Bastards in a gritty fantasy setting. The leads are charming as hell and the dialogue crackles. I cannot recommend them enough, even to readers who don't normally go for fantasy novels.

-I'm within a few discs of finishing The Wire. It was all I could do not to pull the trigger and buy the whole series when it was on sale on Amazon earlier this week for $80. It's so damned good. I think I'll be finishing up with the on-disc part of my Netflix subscription once I've finished it and caught up on Boardwalk Empire.

-I had really mixed feelings about the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, but overall, I liked it. I almost wish there had been a whole season or mini-series devoted to John Hurt's character, but oh well. Nice to see Tennant, too bad Eccleston has some sort of stick up his ass about that show, and a shame none of the other surviving Doctors were featured. If anyone wishes to discuss this one further, I suspect we ought to do it via a PM so we don't risk spoiling anything.

And that's about it. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and even if you're not an American, I hope you take a few minutes this week to contemplate and be grateful for those in your life who you love and cherish, and more importantly, who love and cherish you. And seriously, get a pecan pie. Or three.