Wednesday, May 14, 2008
-Hey Yo! Class is finished! Well, for the most part that is. I have one more day to attend, which is for my Creative Writing class tomorrow, but that day there is no final, we simply receive all of our graded revisions back and some information on publishing. Technical Writing my final grade was an A, huzzah! Creative Writing I should finish with another strong A. However my streak of As (I think including the aforementioned two classes, my last ten classes I have aced) will come to an end with my Human Biology class. Before my last final I had a 78% and was hoping that by doing well on the final I would manage to get a B. I did perform well on the final, but only managed to bump my score up to a 79.8%, the way I figured it out I was 1.5 points away from a B. I emailed my instructor to see if there's any possibility to round it up, I doubt it's going to happen, but we'll see. While on the topic of classes, I registered for next semester already and will be enrolled in classes for Nutrition, Hispanic Culture Studies and College Publications.
-Now that class is done I can go back to wasting my hours away in my gaming backlog, just like last summer. Lately I have been playing a ton of Phoeniex Wright and GTAIV. Phoenix Wright is nearly complete, I am on Day 3 of the last case, about a good 20-23 hours in overall. GTAIV I am a hair over 20% complete with roughly 10 hours invested thus far. GTA is starting to get more interesting as I know out more campaign missions. The last one I did was winning that race for Brucie. I think I heard on The Hotspot podcast that once you win enough races for him, he'll award you his helicopter, so I think I will shoot for that now since IV does not have a jetpack that made traversing in San Andreas so easy. I am digging Phoenix Wright too, but I am at the point where I want the game to end. The dialogue is interesting and manages to keep me hooked, but it seems every time I get to the point where the judge decides to extend the trial another day I curse up a storm because a day in Phoenix Wright-land equates out to around 4-5 hours of gameplay, not that there's anything wrong with those 4-5 hours, it's just that I feel sometimes "geesh, another 5 hours to go."
Besides those two games, I threw in Oblivion last weekend for the first time in several months. Picked up on the main questline as I originally planned after finishing up Mages & Fighters Guild quests last summer. I think I am about a third into the main questline, with the last quest I did being the one where I hunted down the spies outside the Blades' Temple. I am going to shoot to finish the main quest and the remaining guild quests (Dark Brotherhood & Thieves guild) by the end of the summer. Right now, Oblivion holds the honor of being the single player game I invested the most hours into, which stands currently at 51.
-Last Saturday Scott came over and we had a gaming marathon. First we knocked out the rest of the gigs in LA in our Band Tour in Rock Band. We now have tallied up just over 1000 stars total. Afterwards, we picked up on our campaign in Dark Alliance, and played it for 5 hours straight, knocking out a good chunk of Act II in process. Don't know for sure what game Scott and I are going to tackle after Dark Alliance. I think I may borrow Dark Alliance II from Chris, or we may decide to dive into Champions of Norrath instead.
-When I was reading through the latest EGM recently, I was a little surprised to see the DS is receiving a remake/sequel to one of my favorite NES games, Super Dodge Ball. It only got mediocre scores, but I have a soft spot for that game and after seeing screens of how it close it resembled the NES classic, I went out and plunked down $5 for a preorder. Here's hoping it doesn't disappoint. I played straight through Dodge Ball Advance on GBA, but wasn't too impressed with that, I guess it didn't seem to capture the same level of fun and tried to do too much compared to NES Dodge Ball, and it didn't have Bean Ball mode either which was a huge knock against it!
-I spent all of Mother's Day at home visiting with the family. Unfortunately, the day didn't go that smooth. That's how things usually roll with my family, but that day was so disjointed and messed up than most. We all tried to sit down and play some Taboo, but every time we were about to someone had to get up and do something, and from the time I set the game up to the time we finally started playing, nearly two hours passed! We didn't even finish the game as Jane & Joey got into a huge dispute over some randomness that happened last summer. We tried to watch a movie too that day, but it was impossible to get everyone to agree on something and ultimately it didn't work out. Overall, a mess of a day.
-A week ago Steve and I went down to Fargo and met up with Steve's buddy, Brett again to check out another Metal concert at Playmakers. I always love checking out these concerts at Playmakers. They usually have three or four bands, most which I'm not too familiar with, but I find it as a convenient way to get introduced to some new metal, and have a good time moshing my head off for around $20 or less. This show's featured act was As I Lay Dying, with Evergreen Terrace, Misery Signal and August Burns Red as the openers.
Evergreen Terrace started things off and for being the opener I was surprised to find myself jamming out the most to them, their sound gelled well for me. I wish could say the same thing about Misery Signal, but I can't as they seemed like pointless noise with no real emotion behind it....I couldn't get into them. August Burns Red did pick things up a bit, and the crowd was really into them, and the crowd ignited for As I Lay Dying, who maintained a fast and high-energy tempo for their entire set. Overall a good time, not the best metal show I've been too, but far from being a disaster. I must have hoisted up at least a dozen bodysurfers, and yes, I finally bodysurfed myself for the first time ever. Steve and Brett kept egging me on throughout the show and I finally caved in fearing they would grab me when I least suspected it, so I wanted to be prepared for it at least, and it ended up being a fun experience. Probably not going to do it again though. The three of us are currently planning on trekking down to Fargo again next month to check out Hatebreed & Type-O-Negative.
-So a couple weekends ago Chris, Scott and I checked out Iron Man. Definitely a good superhero flick worth watching. I'm sure most of you reading have probably heard a lot about this film, so I don't need to go into that much detail. Hard to say though how much I really liked it. As far as best superhero movie, I don't know, I think I would have no qualms placing it in my top 5 along with Batman Begins, Punisher (both of them, yes both of them cause I'm a Punisher dork!) and Spider-Man 2. The thing is, there was so much hype and speculation about how the film will be going in, it made it hard to put a final perspective on it. Still really liked this film, but for now I think I'm going to have to wait several months and watch it again on video before I form a concrete, final opinion on it.
-Last year I ordered my first and only wrestling "shoot" interview DVD, the PW Torch interview with the Hardy Boys. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, it's where the wrestlers put all the gimmicks and storylines aside and tell everything as it is. It's a pretty beefy set, three discs, one with a 3 hour interview with both Hardyz covering most of their tag career and how they broke into the business, the second disc being an hour with Jeff Hardy, and the third being nearly two hours with Matt Hardy. Why so much longer with Matt you pinder? Why that was because this was filmed in early 2005 when Matt was temporarily unemployed from WWE after Edge was legitimately caught cheating on Matt's then girlfriend and WWE Diva, Lita. So far I watched two of the discs, with only the Matt Hardy disc remaining. The Matt & Jeff disc was a very good interview, with lots of interesting stories on how they got in the business at such a young age, and forming their own indy wrestling leagues. The Jeff disc was ok, a lot of it was spent talking about Jeff's unique perspective on life and his own personal music and artwork.
-I will wrap up this blog by plugging the two awesome retrospectives that gametrailers.com is currently running. One is a retrospective for every single Star Wars video game ever made! Yes, they're even giving shoutouts to all the GameBoy games too! I'm not a Star Wars nut by any means, but I do have some fond memories of playing some Star Wars games like Shadows of the Empire and Knights of the Old Republic, so it's interesting to see how the games evolved over the years and on all the consoles. The other retrospective GameTrailers just started up is for Metal Gear. The first installment is up right now and it covers, Metal Gear, Snake's Revenge, and the formerly Japan-only Metar Gear 2: Solid Snake. Just like with Star Wars, I'm not into Metal Gear at all, only game I tried was MGS2 on Xbox, and it was not my type of game, but gametrailers does a fine job producing their retrospectives and hell, they could do a retrospective about all the shitty Superman games and I would still find it fascinating. Make sure to check out both of them, and brush up on your videogame history!
-Until next time, later!
-Now that class is done I can go back to wasting my hours away in my gaming backlog, just like last summer. Lately I have been playing a ton of Phoeniex Wright and GTAIV. Phoenix Wright is nearly complete, I am on Day 3 of the last case, about a good 20-23 hours in overall. GTAIV I am a hair over 20% complete with roughly 10 hours invested thus far. GTA is starting to get more interesting as I know out more campaign missions. The last one I did was winning that race for Brucie. I think I heard on The Hotspot podcast that once you win enough races for him, he'll award you his helicopter, so I think I will shoot for that now since IV does not have a jetpack that made traversing in San Andreas so easy. I am digging Phoenix Wright too, but I am at the point where I want the game to end. The dialogue is interesting and manages to keep me hooked, but it seems every time I get to the point where the judge decides to extend the trial another day I curse up a storm because a day in Phoenix Wright-land equates out to around 4-5 hours of gameplay, not that there's anything wrong with those 4-5 hours, it's just that I feel sometimes "geesh, another 5 hours to go."
Besides those two games, I threw in Oblivion last weekend for the first time in several months. Picked up on the main questline as I originally planned after finishing up Mages & Fighters Guild quests last summer. I think I am about a third into the main questline, with the last quest I did being the one where I hunted down the spies outside the Blades' Temple. I am going to shoot to finish the main quest and the remaining guild quests (Dark Brotherhood & Thieves guild) by the end of the summer. Right now, Oblivion holds the honor of being the single player game I invested the most hours into, which stands currently at 51.
-Last Saturday Scott came over and we had a gaming marathon. First we knocked out the rest of the gigs in LA in our Band Tour in Rock Band. We now have tallied up just over 1000 stars total. Afterwards, we picked up on our campaign in Dark Alliance, and played it for 5 hours straight, knocking out a good chunk of Act II in process. Don't know for sure what game Scott and I are going to tackle after Dark Alliance. I think I may borrow Dark Alliance II from Chris, or we may decide to dive into Champions of Norrath instead.
-When I was reading through the latest EGM recently, I was a little surprised to see the DS is receiving a remake/sequel to one of my favorite NES games, Super Dodge Ball. It only got mediocre scores, but I have a soft spot for that game and after seeing screens of how it close it resembled the NES classic, I went out and plunked down $5 for a preorder. Here's hoping it doesn't disappoint. I played straight through Dodge Ball Advance on GBA, but wasn't too impressed with that, I guess it didn't seem to capture the same level of fun and tried to do too much compared to NES Dodge Ball, and it didn't have Bean Ball mode either which was a huge knock against it!
-I spent all of Mother's Day at home visiting with the family. Unfortunately, the day didn't go that smooth. That's how things usually roll with my family, but that day was so disjointed and messed up than most. We all tried to sit down and play some Taboo, but every time we were about to someone had to get up and do something, and from the time I set the game up to the time we finally started playing, nearly two hours passed! We didn't even finish the game as Jane & Joey got into a huge dispute over some randomness that happened last summer. We tried to watch a movie too that day, but it was impossible to get everyone to agree on something and ultimately it didn't work out. Overall, a mess of a day.
-A week ago Steve and I went down to Fargo and met up with Steve's buddy, Brett again to check out another Metal concert at Playmakers. I always love checking out these concerts at Playmakers. They usually have three or four bands, most which I'm not too familiar with, but I find it as a convenient way to get introduced to some new metal, and have a good time moshing my head off for around $20 or less. This show's featured act was As I Lay Dying, with Evergreen Terrace, Misery Signal and August Burns Red as the openers.
Evergreen Terrace started things off and for being the opener I was surprised to find myself jamming out the most to them, their sound gelled well for me. I wish could say the same thing about Misery Signal, but I can't as they seemed like pointless noise with no real emotion behind it....I couldn't get into them. August Burns Red did pick things up a bit, and the crowd was really into them, and the crowd ignited for As I Lay Dying, who maintained a fast and high-energy tempo for their entire set. Overall a good time, not the best metal show I've been too, but far from being a disaster. I must have hoisted up at least a dozen bodysurfers, and yes, I finally bodysurfed myself for the first time ever. Steve and Brett kept egging me on throughout the show and I finally caved in fearing they would grab me when I least suspected it, so I wanted to be prepared for it at least, and it ended up being a fun experience. Probably not going to do it again though. The three of us are currently planning on trekking down to Fargo again next month to check out Hatebreed & Type-O-Negative.
-So a couple weekends ago Chris, Scott and I checked out Iron Man. Definitely a good superhero flick worth watching. I'm sure most of you reading have probably heard a lot about this film, so I don't need to go into that much detail. Hard to say though how much I really liked it. As far as best superhero movie, I don't know, I think I would have no qualms placing it in my top 5 along with Batman Begins, Punisher (both of them, yes both of them cause I'm a Punisher dork!) and Spider-Man 2. The thing is, there was so much hype and speculation about how the film will be going in, it made it hard to put a final perspective on it. Still really liked this film, but for now I think I'm going to have to wait several months and watch it again on video before I form a concrete, final opinion on it.
-Last year I ordered my first and only wrestling "shoot" interview DVD, the PW Torch interview with the Hardy Boys. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, it's where the wrestlers put all the gimmicks and storylines aside and tell everything as it is. It's a pretty beefy set, three discs, one with a 3 hour interview with both Hardyz covering most of their tag career and how they broke into the business, the second disc being an hour with Jeff Hardy, and the third being nearly two hours with Matt Hardy. Why so much longer with Matt you pinder? Why that was because this was filmed in early 2005 when Matt was temporarily unemployed from WWE after Edge was legitimately caught cheating on Matt's then girlfriend and WWE Diva, Lita. So far I watched two of the discs, with only the Matt Hardy disc remaining. The Matt & Jeff disc was a very good interview, with lots of interesting stories on how they got in the business at such a young age, and forming their own indy wrestling leagues. The Jeff disc was ok, a lot of it was spent talking about Jeff's unique perspective on life and his own personal music and artwork.
-I will wrap up this blog by plugging the two awesome retrospectives that gametrailers.com is currently running. One is a retrospective for every single Star Wars video game ever made! Yes, they're even giving shoutouts to all the GameBoy games too! I'm not a Star Wars nut by any means, but I do have some fond memories of playing some Star Wars games like Shadows of the Empire and Knights of the Old Republic, so it's interesting to see how the games evolved over the years and on all the consoles. The other retrospective GameTrailers just started up is for Metal Gear. The first installment is up right now and it covers, Metal Gear, Snake's Revenge, and the formerly Japan-only Metar Gear 2: Solid Snake. Just like with Star Wars, I'm not into Metal Gear at all, only game I tried was MGS2 on Xbox, and it was not my type of game, but gametrailers does a fine job producing their retrospectives and hell, they could do a retrospective about all the shitty Superman games and I would still find it fascinating. Make sure to check out both of them, and brush up on your videogame history!
-Until next time, later!
Comments:
Post a Comment
