Hearing that music again (though I do miss the countdown so) gave me chills, there’s no one quite like Jericho. He proved that by having one the more bizarre, but seemingly brilliant, returns in recent memory. Aside from a few random yells Jericho didn’t talk on mic at all for the almost 10 minutes he was on screen.  He simply ran around the ring high fiving fans and smiling incessantly, seemingly overcome with joy to be back among the WWE fans.

The interesting part about this whole segment is how the fans turned, as Jericho continued to tease by picking up a mic and proceeding to drop it, as time went on the crowd didn’t seem amused. While his initial entrance was of course met with loud cheers and chants of “Y2J” by the time he exited the arena there were noticeable boos. Had Jericho just made one of the easiest and masterful heel turns ever? By not giving the fans what they wanted, a promo from the legendary Y2J, his actions have been called trolling by most. It certainly fits with Jericho’s usual heel personas which general revolve around the WWE fans and their reactions to the roster.

We’ll presumably have to wait till next week to find out just what Jericho was up to but either way his return has created a lot of buzz and got me and many others pretty excited. Wrestling may still be a bit of a joke at times but with guys like Jericho and CM Punk on the roster it can and has still be great fun to watch more often than not.

Before I had a Playstation 3 the Uncharted series was high on my list of PS3 exclusives I needed to play. In addition to the mountains of praise it received everything I’d seen of the games looked great. A modern tale of adventure with a wise cracking protagonist and one of the prettiest game engines around, sounds good to me!

Then I played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and my expectations were tempered slightly. I completed the game in a weekend while staying at a friends. So I told myself my issues were probably due to trying to rush to the end. The entire time I was just trying to push through the gameplay to get to the next cutscene and advance the story. I wanted to hear more quips from Nathan Drake and see more beautiful locales. However to do that I needed to trudge through a not great shooter with fairly simple Tomb Raider-esque platforming and the occasional puzzle. I did it though and while I became very frustrated toward the end of the game I still enjoyed the experience, Naughty Dog tell a good tale.

This christmas I got the surprise gift of a PS3, so naturally my first purchase was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. While my excitement for the series had waned a little after Drake’s Fortune and hearing some not so great things about the third entry I still wanted more. And hey, hadn’t I heard everyone praise the hell out of Uncharted 2 when it came out? Hadn’t it won a bunch of game of the year awards? Surely that meant my issues with the first game would have been dealt with, right?
Much like my experience with UC1 I quite enjoyed my time with Among Thieves for a good portion of the time. Sure the shooting isn’t the best but it’s solid enough and wasn’t too much of a chore. The platforming hadn’t changed too much but it was still satisfying to see Nathan clamber around. While they weren’t especially difficult I appreciated the various puzzled sprinkled throughout, they required just enough thought on my part to not be overly challenging while not making my input feel redundant.

About two thirds of the way into Uncharted 2′s campaign it takes a terrible turn and becomes one of the worst shooters I’ve played. As I said before, the shooting itself is fine but the various combat scenarios you are placed into seemingly work against those mechanics. Enemies become more numerous, tougher and much more aggressive. As a result what was a fairly easy breezy shooter becomes a masterclass in frustration. After this point my “wow”‘s were no long in response to amazing visuals and setpieces, they were in response to incredibly bad design and cheap deaths. I was constantly being flushed out of cover by grenades, meaning I had to run out into the open and face armoured enemies with shotguns. If they didn’t get me then the one shot snipers certainly would. Or in the case of the end area of the game perhaps it’d be a crazy supernatural guy who requires countless clips of ammo emptied into his chest to be defeated. Of course he’s wielding the Crossbow, one of the more powerful weapons in the game because that’s fair and well designed.

As I played my problem became less about the game, afterall I’d had this same experience with the first one, but more all those people who’d recommended it without question. Just why had I not heard about these fundamental flaws in this game? These late combat sections were without question bad and just not fun. So why then had this game topped game of the year lists and why had no one thought to mention it was far from perfect? I am at a loss, either we played a different game of they were blinded by pretty graphics.

At one point I had seemingly cleared out an area and could see my obvious exit, so obviously I headed in that directed and climbed up the ledge. Immediately two enemies spawned behind me and blasted me in the back with shotguns. I died, not because I had been careless but because I had tried to leave the combat area before this specific fight was over. I’ve seen other recent games ripped to shreds for having fail states like this, but Uncharted somehow got a pass. I’d like to know why!

To explain the One A Day Project I’m going to copy and paste some relevant stuff from their FAQ page over on their site.

What is the One A Day Project?

The One A Day Project is a community of creative types aiming to post things on their sites as regularly as possible.

Do participants have to post every day?

No. Despite the name, all participants have to do is make a commitment to posting regularly. Whether this is daily, twice weekly, weekly or some other interval is up to them.

So why is is called “The One A Day Project”?

Because it grew out of an attempt by a bunch of committed bloggers throughout 2010 to post on their blogs every single day, originating with @ultrabrilliant, among others. Many started. Few finished. In an attempt to keep everyone motivated and not have it feeling like work, the “rules” have been relaxed a little.

What counts as a “post”?

Anything. Individual participants can set their own personal goals, but a generally agreed minimum is at least a paragraph or a photo post. If you want to keep people coming back to your site, though, provide some quality content regularly!

Why are you doing this?

Two reasons. Firstly, to allow people to practice the discipline of regular, non-stop creativity. And secondly, to benefit two good causes: Cancer Research UK and To Write Love On Her Arms.

When I saw Rick’s tweet earlier about attempting to do this, it sparked a thought in my head of trying it myself. I know myself well enough to know I need that little extra push to get myself motivated and this seems like a perfect way to have that constantly. Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two about writing (and myself) along the way, really I think that’s pretty much guaranteed.

This might not be going up on January 1st but consider this the day 1 post. As the above states it’s not about doing a post every day but I’m going to try and do that for as long as possible. If I falter I’ll be disappointed but I’ll still use this as a motivation and stick with the “one a day” philosophy to motivate me. I consider this post cheating slight, not just because it’s not going up on the 1st but also because writing about the reason I’m writing seems a tad redundant.

Anyway it’s done now and I do actually already have a few things planned to write for at least this week. Whether I manage to write them and get them up in a timely fashion is another story. Feel free to stick around for it.