Notebook Dump: Ghost Trick, Carnivorous Plants, Dragon Age Done

There comes a time in the week to reflect on what got into my reporter’s notebook but didn’t turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we?

To be honest, I was a little distracted this week because I was busy becoming a homeowner. And Crecente was in New York doing his thing. And… biggest speed bump of all, I was distracted by not being mentioned in Hulk Hogan‘s new autobiography, “My Life Outside The Ring.”

Very sad.

I wound up with a few leftovers that I don’t plan to turn into full posts.

Ears-On With Ghost Trick: Maybe “ears-on” would even be overstating my exposure to Capcom’s 2010 DS game Ghost Trick. It was the one Capcom game I was hoping to see at the company’s New York City gaming showcase this week that wasn’t there. So I asked a public relations representative to tell me more about it. I knew the game was being made by Phoenix Wright developers. He fleshed things out. I’d be playing as a dead guy, a ghost who can inhabit inanimate objects and prevent people from being killed. And there’s a talking lamp or something. That’s about all I need to be told to want to play this game, but it’s not enough for a post. I will predict right now that Capcom will return to New York, and that they will bring with them Ghost Trick.

Overhead HUDs: I got into a chat with Dark Void producer Morgan Gray about the placement of heads-up displays. His game, which stars a guy on a jetpack and was made by people who developed Crimson Skies games, puts its ammo counter and mini-map across the top of the screen. There’s no HUD along the bottom. I asked why, and while he couldn’t offer me any theories or share any rules about HUD placement, he said that Dark Void’s was placed at the top because that’s the tradition in flight games. Makes sense. Somehow these decisions do get made.

Dragon Age Has Been Shrinkwrapped And Unshrinkwraapped: Back when my gaming schedule was dictated by when games were on sale in stores, I never thought that games might be finished, sitting in boxes somewhere, days or weeks early. Well, sometimes they are. As I’m typing this, I have a boxed copy of early November’s Dragon Age: Origins for the Xbox 360 on my desk. That’s not post-worthy, because it’d seem like bragging. But it’s kind of interesting, no? Shrinkwrapped Ratchet & Clank has been on my desk this week too.

A Plant That Eats Meat The always-gentlemanly PR man Rob Fleischer stopped by today at the Gawker Media (aka Kotaku parent company) offices where I work today. He was showing me two games that I can’t write about yet. And, somehow, even though I started here in May, he was the first PR person to do a meeting with me here. Most of my meetings are at hotels and other demo venues. Classy guy that Rob is, he brought me a Pitcher Plant. It eats flies. … Was he sending me a message?

That’s enough Notebook Dumping. I need to go home and pack. And if you want to be mightily impressed, check out how amazingly high I rank on the Ratchet & Clank leaderboards. Thankfully, the game isn’t out yet.

Have a good weekend everyone.