Xbox 360 works fine now, thanks to that handy-dandy repair kit I got from that website. Good stuff. Still not a fan of Microsoft anymore (is anyone these days?), but at least I can continue to enjoy Rock Band.
I did get myself a Playstation 3, though. Yes, the MGS4 Bundle. Yes, that game is far surpassing my expectations. Yes, the Ps3 is a better system compared to both the Xbox 360 and the Wii.
People have been complaining here and there that the cutscenes in the game are too long. And while a conventional, or perhaps new IP game would warrant such a criticism, MGS4 is neither of those things. It's legacy is categorized primarily by its epic storytelling and immensive world. I played all the previous installments, so going into 4 I knew exactly to expect. Are the cutscenes long? Yup! But weren't they always long? And if they're well done, does it matter?
The game's presentation is phenominal. The level of polish that went into this game is astronomical. I would even go so far as to say this game is worth buying a Ps3 for. Hell, people said the original Halo was worth buying an Xbox over. And this game is leagues better than the Halo franchise. So, wrap your brain around that one for a few minutes if you're on the edge.
At any rate, I also purchased GTA IV (for the Ps3), and I'm planning on having oodles of fun with that. Oh the hookers I will kill. And the drugs...the drugs! I can even practice driving drunk now! I can't wait. And maybe, just maybe, if I play the game enough, I'll come to the international conclusion that killing people at random is perfectly okay. Fingers crossed!
It was a Sunday night. The dense summer humidity outside streaked the windows with an eerie dew, and the setting sun drifted into the living room of my apartment with an unnatural sparkle. My roommate and I, fresh beers in our mitts, sat on the cool, black leather couch. We were prepared to watch House -- a TV show we'd been slowly making our way through since the beginning of summer. Being oh-so-tech-savvy, my Xbox 360 game console was setup to stream from my computer, located upstairs, so our only effort in completing our endeavor was pushing the well-known Xbox logo on the wireless controller to get the relaxation party started. And push we did.
But our efforts were immediately squandered. Three lights, all blinking an evil red -- a red darker than the most vile of blood -- emanated from the power button of the console. And thus, my Xbox became victim to a Red Ring of Death. We gaped in horror.
I sprang from my spot on the couch, leaping over the footrests and nearly dropping my precious, precious beer. Maybe it was the A/V cable, I thought. Maybe I just need to reset it. But no. Nothing would ressurect my dead console. I stood there, staring at my collection of Xbox games, my heavily modified Rock Band equipment, my investments. Was all to be lost?
"Maybe it's under warranty!" I exclamed, and ran -- just as vigorous as before -- to my computer and found the infamous Xbox warranty page. They demand a recipt, and this is an item I did not have. My only option would be to face hours upon hours on the phone with Microsoft Technical Support -- also known as "Satan's Earthly Playground." I was doomed.
But I did find a nice website, in between my overwhelming bouts of misery, that offered Red Ring of Death Repair Kits.
And so, I now wait for an Xbox repair kit to arrive at my house, thus making a last-ditch, $29.99 effort to repair my console. Will it work? Only the Gods know.
--
Well, maybe it wasn't that dramatic. But close. Very close.
Damnit.
*WARNING* Small, angry rant: Fuck you Microsoft. Fuck you and your inability to create a simple piece of functioning hardware. Fuck you for not being able to create a simple piece of functioning hardware after 3 years. You just lost a fan.
Anyway, fuck it. I'll be heading to my local Best Buy this Thursday to snag a MGS4 PS3 bundle. Then I won't have to worry about RRoD's for a while. And from now on, any games that come out on both consoles, I'll be getting for the PS3. Gamerscores are meaningless anyway.
Oh, and my roommate and I did get to watch House, after all. I simply burned a DVD and put it in my PS2. My 9 year-old PS2. That still works. After 9 years. Yup.
I'm still here. Been taking a break, kinda sorta. I'll be posting something somewhat substantial sometime soon (tongue-twister!). In the meantime, I got a new set of Rock Band drum pads annnnd...they work! Wowzers! Now I can get the 900+ note streaks and constant 99% completions I so much knew I could get before but without really knowing because the god damned pads missed for no reason what so ever. *cough* In the meantime, enjoy this Penny-Arcade comic (click to enlarge):
Well, I'm done college. Did the whole graduation thing and all that. So! Anyone need someone with a BA in Literature? Anyone? Hello?
FINE! I'll go to graduate school...
Anyway, now that it's summer and I have virtually nothing to do except make money and drink beer (awesome!), I have free time up the wahzoo. I'm currently blasting my way through House, the TV show. Good, good shit. Procured all of the seasons in a magical, complicated process involving stuff that rhymes with "florrents." I don't really know how it all works. Something about tubes.
I also grew a beard because of my inability-to-shave inspired hospitalization. Looks kinda cool. I figured it's playoff season, so, why not roll with it for a while.
In other "interesting to mainly me" news, Nine Inch Nails did something wonderful and released their newest album for free via their website. My overwhelming support for such a valiant presentation of artful work drove me to buy tickets to their August 29th concert at the Wachovia Center in Philly. I'll be going with my dad (jealous? should be.). I can't wait.
In the world of videogames it seems there's been a nice trend going on in the musical world of stuff: Rock Band Fever, it should be called. Guitar Hero IV is supposed to have a drum kit, and Konami has announced its ownRock Band knock-off entitled Rock Revolution, thus titling their game something the entire country of Japan will be unable to pronounce. Will it succeed? Time will tell, but I doubt it.
Rock Band has managed to net a huuuuuge fan base already, and its weekly release of usually decent content is more than enough to keep people loyal. Yeah, Guitar Hero was first, but they've been trumped. They have. Face it. As of now I can play Rock Band for over six hours and not repeat a single song. Can Guitar Hero claim that? Well, with combined games, sure...but who counts that?
Rock Band 2 will be nifty. I know details because I work with some little company called "MTV," but I sure as shit can't spill any of my beans. Which is fine because I get to know stuff you don't (this is where I stick my tounge out).
The point is, Rock Band did something cool, and so now everyone wants to be cool. So, copycat games are going to start flooding the gamespace. Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn't. The problem here, though, is that these companies aren't copying some simple game mechanic (like, say, timed button-pressing boss fights a la God of War), but an entire game experience. If you have Rock Band, 60 downloaded tracks, and the whole instrument setup, are you going to re-buy that for a Guitar Hero game? For a Konami game (which has a chunk of the same songs, by the way)? Unless you're rich as hell, I'd imagine not. These new iterations can try to appeal to gamers by offering additional "cymbals" or "drum pads," but beyond super-duper hardcore music fans, this stuff will easily fly over everyone's heads. Shame, too, because if all this had come out at the same time, it would have been quite a showdown. Oh well.
I applaud the attempt at competition, though. Maybe, maybe if these new games are amazing in their own new and exciting ways, I'll grab them, but the addition of two more drum pads (Konami) isn't going to be enough to force over my cash.
In the meantime, I'll just keep enjoying what I already have...even if I know I'll have to exchange my drum kit for a forth time. Damnit.
Echochrome is incredible. I must say it has definitely set itself apart of the rest of the puzzle games out there, and proves that just because a game lacks glamor doesn't mean it can't still woo you in the best of ways.
If you've never seen any Escher drawing or concept, then, well, you have some catching up to do. Go look him up. But if you have, then you know where the foundations of this game lay. Echochrome is a game that relies heavily on perspective in order to solve is mind-numbing puzzles. Each level is...well, they're kinda like that picture at the top there -- minimalist wire-frame-ish black and white in an open, free floating 3d world.
The game is part Lemmings, part Super Paper Mario, and part Snake (the once popular Nokia cell phone game). So how does it work? Well I'm glad you asked. You play the role of a little mannequin-looking guy who has to walk around aimlessly in these strange, blocky levels. His goal is to collect all of the "echoes" in each level--those are the fuzzy, black shadowy-looking things standing around the level up above. Think of them as the pixels/mushrooms/apples in Snake (depending on the version you're playing), each one collected bringing you closer to the end of the level.
Your little guy moves around on his own -- the only control you posses over him is the ability to make him stop and "think," allowing you to examine you next possible approach in the puzzle. In this respect, the game is like Lemmings...he just keeps walking around until he either bumps into a wall and turns around, or falls to his death. Thankfully, you don't have a set number of lives, so every time he "dies," he gets warped back up to where he was (complete with the female computer's voice saying, "oops!") for you to give whatever you were doing another shot. So, on top of the puzzle aspect of the game, there's a small level of strategy needed, as timing when your little guy stops and starts is key to completing certain puzzles. Very cool.
The perspective stuff is the where this game really shines (a la Super Paper Mario...sort of). I have the game for the PSP (there's also a PS3 version with the same number of puzzles, though all of the puzzles are different), so for this system you either use the joystick or the D pad to rotate your perspective of the level. Depending on how you look at everything depends on where your mannequin can walk. For example, if there is a path that is broken up by a space, but there is a vertical pillar also in the level, turning the camera view to make the pillar block that space in the path from a certain perspective (making it appear as if there is no space) will magically connect the path -- essentially, if it something appears to be something...then it is. Confusing, isn't it? Here's a video:
Much like the Escher drawing of the never-ending stairs, this game begs you to bend your mind and accept/solve puzzles based solely on appearance rather than real-world physics. This, in a world where we always crave realism, makes this game all the more superb. If there is a path that ends, shifting the perspective to a different angle might bridge it with another path, moving the puzzle forward. If there is a hole, your mannequin will fall through and land on whatever is directly underneath, even if physics tell you otherwise. Suspension of reality is, again, key.
The few problems I encountered were almost not worth mentioning. But I'll mention them anyway. Sometimes -- especially when you first set out to play -- its hard to tell where your little guy will go if there's a fork in his path choice. After playing about the first dozen levels or so, you'll figure it out, though (he prefers left). Or, if you're very thorough (I wasn't), this factoid is embedded in the second page of the "tips" that are accessed from the main menu when you start the game. Perhaps they should explain that outright, but...whatever.
Sometimes the perspective-matching can be a little wonky, too. There was one level in particular I was certain I matched up a path, but no matter what I did, the guy wouldn't take it. Granted, with a game like this it's almost impossible to make every puzzle perfect and every perspective-created path work. Also, by pushing the square button, the perspective will "snap" to what seems the most appropriate place -- though I avoided using it as it sometimes put the perspective somewhere I didn't want it to -- it's still helpful sometimes. So this issue is minimal at best and only happened maybe three times the whole time I played (of over two hours). I'm just saying don't expect every single path you see to work...there has to be some boundaries in a puzzle game for it to really function as a puzzle game.
The music is wonderful, with a classical, violin soundtrack lulling your brain a la Mozart so that even in your most frustrated of moments, you really aren't that pissed off (well, maybe you are...not everyone likes classical music). The presentation is simply wonderful. The included tutorial gets you up to speed quickly, proving that what might appear very simple at first can get difficult very quickly. But the pacing is fine, so by the time you start to hit the painful puzzles (there are 56 total on either system, with the PS3 getting downloadable content later), you've probably been expecting them, instead of them suddenly blowing up in your face.
Simply put, this game is original, awesome, and extremely fun. Tack on the fact that it's only a 10 dollar download, there's an included level creator (allowing you to come up with puzzles to hurt other people's brains or show off your creative muscle), and it only takes up 44 megs on the PSP's memory stick, and you have no reason not to get this game if you have a PS3 or PSP. This here is a perfect example of how Sony can outshine Nintendo or Microsoft. If only they could do this all the time, they'd have it made.
I definitely give this game a 9.5/10, and suggest you get it. Right now.
It's been quite a while since I got any comments here (::stares intently at the internet::), so I figured it's a good time to bump it and hope for some more. Please leave a comment so that I can do this whole thing -- I really want to. Hell, I was in the hospital for a week, so I know how much those places totally blow ass...don't you think the kids of the world should get some games while they're there? Comment.
Original post picks up here:
So, here's my proposal to the very few people that read this blog:
If I get 250 unique comments total asking for this (that means not just this post, but it'd help if this was the post. I'll bump it every so often for reminder's sake.) I will play through every single Guitar Hero game IN A ROW in order to raise money for charity.I would be donating to Child's Play because they are fantastic. And... If I raised (somehow) more than 500 bucks before Guitar Hero III is finished, I'd go through Rock Band on drums, including all the downloadable content I currently have (with the exception of "Blackened." I just can't do it. I've tried many times, though I'll do it on practice mode). Otherwise, Rock Band will be excluded. All games would be played on EXPERT, regardless of how badly my hand(s) start(s) to hurt. And! The only time I'm allowed to take a break is after I complete a game. Or I have to go to the bathroom. I think that's acceptable.
I'd lower the number of comments required to do this, but it'd be stupid to do this for a charity, and then get no donations. That's not the point of a "fundraiser," now is it? I need to have support for possibly permanently damaging my hands. I'm not personally going to send this to any news websites (Digg, Kotaku, Joystiq, 1up, etc.). If you want this to happen, it'll happen, I can't force it. But if you send it, I won't stop you, certainly.
Why 250? Well, I figure if each person donates, say, 5 bucks...well, that's 1250 bucks! That's really good! Even 4 bucks a person is decent. Considering the sheer number of people on the internet, 250 isn't asking for much. The fine details would be ironed out after I get all the comments...if I get them. I certainly hope I do. Oh, and how about I'll throw the name of every person who donates in an entry, too (if they want to). Sound good? Cool.
More rules:
- The comment has to say the words "Do the fundraiser." Just any ol' comment won't work. - No "anonymous" comments. Please leave SOME kind of name. - For every failed song, I will donate 1 dollar (might not sound like much, but after many hours of playing, GH3 will take its toll, I'm sure). - For every 100%'ed song, I will donate 5 dollars (and I'll try, I promise). - The date of all this will, obviously, happen as soon as the 250 comment mark is reached. It'll be a weekend, though. - Minimum donation of 1 dollar. Makes sense. - That's all I can think of for now.
If you think about each game, and its length in the music...this would take a while. Probably 3 hours for Guitar Hero, 4 or 5 for Guitar Hero 2, and another 5 for GH3. Then Rock Band is easily 8 hours with all the content I've downloaded. Energy drinks away! I'd be playing the Xbox 360 versions of GH2, GH3, and Rock Band, too. Remember, I'm just one person, not several like the Zelda thing, so I can't really play SUPER long games.
So, charge those PayPal accounts and start commenting! C'mon "internet's ability to do stuff!" Do stuff!
Well, this is going to be a good deviation from any normal post that I'd put here. This one is dedicated to my Senior Seminar, and thus will be used purely for my "presentation" occurring Tuesday. What is this all about, then?
Monsters.
Well, for me, just one monster...or monster type, I should say. This semester's Senior Seminar deals with monsters, monstrosities, and everything demon-ish in between. Now, I've been in the hospital for the past week, as some of you may recall, so while my paper isn't even close to finishing itself, at least I can briefly discuss what my monster is here.
My monster is, well, there isn't really a name for it. It's The Thing. Literally the monster from John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, I've chosen to examine the creature in-depth and, hopefully, with a bucket or two of intelligence.
What is The Thing?
Well, it's a monster. Duh. But more importantly it's a monster that deviates from the normal things (ha ha!) you tend to see in scary films and literature. This monster is one who appears to be exactly like either you or someone you know. Meaning that until it is exposed (or kills you), there is no way of knowing what is and isn't a Thing.
Why is this monster awesome?
Good question. There is an exorbitant amount really interesting stuff surrounding this monster. From the psychological point of being a possible victim, to the philosophical point of its ability to redefine who you consider yourself to be as a human or a person, this monster absorbs you, literally, and infects everyone surrounding it with total, absolute fear.
Where did it come from?
In the movie, (and the 1938 novella Who Goes There? that the movie is based on) outer space. Yes, that means it's an alien. But before all of the "modern" adaptations of this monster, there had to be something "old" that it came from. Enter the medieval period. Back then, they had a monster known as the Donestre (pictured), which was essentially the building block for The Thing creature. Only the Donestre was clearly monstrous (a unclothed creature with the head of a lion) and thus did not appear to be like a human in any way. So then how is really it a monster? The Donestre would approach travelers and immediately start to speak their language. This calmed the travelers into putting their guard down, at which time the Donestre would attack, devouring all of its victim save for the head. Then, and here's the really odd thing, it would weep and feel sorry for the act it just committed, crying over the lonesome head of its victim.
In my paper, I explore the psychology of this monster, coming to some nifty points about what it is to be a human, and how this monster's remorseful weeping is able to actually thrust it back into the realm of humanity, thus preparing it for whatever victim might come along next -- after all, if it killed someone and kept crying, how would it kill again? How would it re-dignify its humanity? Very interesting stuff.
Back to The Thing.
The Thing, after a nice examination of The Donestre and other monsters slowly spawned from it (friendly werewolves in Bisclavert and friendly giants in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), I can say with complete certainly that The Thing is completely lacking in all humanity, but yet its very survival depends on the ability to be human.
This means that it is a reflection of our selves in respect to the monsters we consider each other to be. Essentially, The Thing is a physical representation of our fear of ourselves. Rapists, murderers, and people who betray us are perhaps the most feared and hated people in existence. The Thing is all of those things wrapped up in a nice, horrific package. It rapes you by absorbing everything about you and psychically entering your body against your will. It murders you by, well, murdering you. And then it betrays you by turning on every friend and other person around by -- and this is the kicker -- looking like you. Rinse and repeat. Until, of course, it's exposed. Then it looks something like this:
Pretty scary stuff, isn't it? It either looks like you, or...something undefinable. Truly a high form of terror.
Anyway, that's what my paper is on, this is what I'm exploring, etc. So, let me end with two nifty clips that deal with The Thing.
First, a clip from the movie. The clip explains itself nicely, but I'll add some minor comments. At this point in the film, everyone has turned against each other, no one really trusts one another, and MacReady (the leader, played by Kurt Russel) has figured out a primitive test to weed out who is and isn't The Thing. The tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife, and the paranoia is very, very rampant. Enjoy:
Second, a clip from Aliens vs Predator 2, the PC game. In this game, you can play as either an Alien, Predator, or human Marine. This can be tied to The Thing because you are placed into the role of the monster. You enter someone as the alien and for the rest of the game are killing humans -- biting their heads off and ripping them to pieces. Yet at the same time, you can switch to the same humans you are drawn to kill and fight off the monsters. It's a very cool game if you've never played it, but here's the opening sequence as the Alien (fast forward to 1:45):
So, there you have it. I'm still doing the paper, but this is what I've been looking at. Pretty cool, isn't it? Especially for a 30-page research paper, anyway.
I think, therefore, I write. Gaming is something I hold to be fantastic and wonderful, which is why I do it every day. I try to do it intelligently, too (all teabagging aside). I like night time. I like cold weather. I'm 34.
