I know, it’s been forever since my last blog, but I swear my excuse is legit. Graduate school is hard and actually takes a ridiculous amount of time if you’re trying to do it right. It’s especially hard if, like me, you’re used to the good ol’ days of 15 week semesters where you get to take your sweet time studying and absorbing the material before eventually getting around to cramming for finals. This quarter system crap is killing me. The 10 weeks are flying by. I’m already in week 7 and I feel like I just got started, though I also feel like I’m 3 weeks behind on reading… very confusing. My advisor likens it to drinking from a fire hose, an unfortunately appropriate analogy. I feel like I’ve been in finals mode since the very beginning so I’m kind of scared about what will happen when my finals actually roll around…

To say the least, I haven’t had much time for playing video games. There were a couple days in which I tried to play Halo 3 during my short study breaks, but then my study breaks ended up being not so short. Most recently I played Guitar Hero III during my study breaks, and that started out OK because I could keep it to one song (er, usually two) between each full hour of studying, but I quickly lost patience with that and had to get to the end of the campaign on Hard before I could do more studying. I don’t think I can afford to pick it up again until Thanksgiving (at the earliest) because beating the campaign on Expert will take me MUCH longer.

However, I think my doom will finally befall me when Assassin’s Creed launches TOMORROW. This has been my most highly anticipated game for a full 2 YEARS, not only as an employee of Ubisoft, but as a hardcore fan of mysterious, historical-setting, open-world, action-adventure games. It doesn’t hurt that the game’s producer is one of my industry idols, Jade Raymond, nor do I object to the fact that the game’s protagonist is the brooding and lethal kind of eye candy.

And on that note, I’ve actually heard that the entire game is eye candy. On top of that, the combat system is rad, the story line is compelling, the world navigation is impressively all-encompassing (ie. you really can climb on everything), and, in general, the game is already exceeding all the lofty expectations that have been set by two years worth of anticipation. And I’m hearing all of this from non-Ubi people. As if I needed any more reasons to be excited about the game.

Despite my sincere attempts to use my Frag Doll wiles to secure an early copy, there was nothing I could do to get the discs pressed more quickly and apparated out of the warehouse sooner. This is likely a blessing in disguise. The longer I go WITHOUT getting Assassin’s Creed, the longer I can hope to keep a handle on my school work. It’s just delaying the inevitable, though. I am destined to get less sleep and less studying done in the next couple of weeks than will be healthy for me or my grades. My only hope is that I can finish the game before my descent into the madness of Finals Week.