Snake, what's wrong? Snake? Snaaaaaaaaaaaake!!

My life since Wednesday: CSS and Metal Gear Solid 2.

CSS: Have learned enough to think "Oh, this is somewhat like XSLT, except it's less flexible, but most browsers actually implement it." Managed to make a <table>-less (and somewhat more colorful) version of the media log page that looks great in Safari, and in all other browsers looks like a Mondrian painting interpreted by Louis Wain and then sent through a typewriter. It looks particularly awful in Windows IE, which is a shame, since the only access I have to a Windows machine is at work; effectively means I can't test future personal-page redesigns except when I'm at the office. (I do have Mac IE, but it's an entirely different codebase, and CSS-rendering implementation, than Windows IE.) Not giving up, though... I just have to move from theory to practice, and then we'll all be peachy.

MGS2, meanwhile, I have finally gotten into, three months after buying the disc. The game is stuffed with cute obtrusiveness, many clever and often kind of silly things it throws at you to trip you up during all your sneaking around. I get killed a lot, but have yet to feel frustrated; this game gets save and continue points right.

I don't mind having only one save point available at, say, the beginning of a tricky obstacle course that you can zip through in a couple of minutes once you know it. I also don't mind boss fights that let you save only at the very start. I hate it, though, when cinematics (or some other lengthy prelude) comes between the save point and the actual fight. MGS1 did this a lot, and I gave up on the difficult endboss fight because it just took too damn long to get from the last allowable save point to the action. After five failures, all the tension was gone, replaced with grrrrr. And grrrrr does not bring me to the fun.

MGS2 fixes this by always giving you a save point at the start of the actual action sequence, so failure means you can leap right back in and try some other tactic immediately. This reminds me of an engrossing text adventure game, or even (unfortunately?) my programming style. Fun!!

Fun trivia: did yooooou know that Solid Snake's voice actor wrote the screenplay for the X-Men movie, and plotted (but didn't write) X2? How about that. (He's also rather young, I now see. Maaaaan, I want to get into voice acting. Someone land me a role in a radio drama or something, please? Thanks.)