Monday, June 09, 2008
-Hello everybody! It feels like I haven't updated in forever, where in reality it has probably only been about a week since my update, and a ton has happened since. So let's get to it.
-Weekend before last Joey and I traversed to Montevideo and met up with the rest of my family for my niece's graduation. Joey and I were there for two days, where Mom and my two sisters were there for a few more. There was a gigantic feast at the open house, and plenty of other family and friends of my niece made the treak down to Monty too. Felt a little weird with not knowing about 80% of the 100+ people that made appearences throughout the day at the open house. Since I am so damn shy about breaking the ice in big crowds, I did the worst and drifted to the corner and conversed with my own family for most of the time. Did manage to get acquainted with a few new people I met, but for the most part I kind of drifted and played my DS. It didn't help my sleep pattern was completely thrown off track for the trip, which led to me sneaking in a nap for a couple hours during the open house. All that aside however, it was good to see my family in Monty again.
-One of my old friends moved back to Grand Forks again after being in California for four years. This town has a way of sucking people back in I noticed. Richard lasted a bit longer than I thought he would. He was down there for four years. I kept in touch with him over the years still (thank you Xbox Live), though I never really considered him more than a gaming buddy, since I mostly only did stuff with him through another friend of mine. Richard said he wanted to change his old ways and start all over again, and I don't know, it just felt odd of him thinking of me as more of a good friend than I consider him. That ever happen to anyone reading this?
Richard also got to know my brother Joey through Xbox Live, so Joey came with me to pick him up at the airport last Friday. I helped him unload his things off at his place, and gave him a quick tour to show him what was new with town since left. It'll be good to have Richard back though, that means I finally have someone to play NBA 2K8 with since Richard was one of the 3 friends who all moved around the same time that I played a majority of my sports games against.
-Damn tire on my truck was giving me trouble this past week. Got off work and noticed it nearly flat. I was contemplating replacing the tire on the spot, but I recalled that tire having a gradual leak a couple weeks ago so I very slowly, with all my weight shifted down on the opposite side of the flat, drove to the gas station across the street and aired it back up to normal again and got the tire patched up. I would rather spend $12 fixing a flat, then $80-100 replacing it.
-I finished the second season of my Extras DVD set. All I have left is the series special finale disc. Definitely dug the second series as much as the first, I love how they integrate the roles of the guest stars. I dug the concept of Andy receiving his own sitcom, which is critically panned a new one, yet manages to stay on the air due to its amazing ratings. Though I am glad the season was only six episodes like the first. I was losing it in the last couple episodes at how repetitive the series was. "Andy confides in Maggie an embarrasing old secret, Maggie later carelessly reveals secret to Andy's nemesis, Andy suffers horribly." It got tough to watch the last couple episodes, but thankfully the show did a complete 180 on its season finale, which made it seem worthwhile enduring the repetitive plots. The special features are also a step up from the first season, as there is a behind-the-scenes feature for every episode, and a couple other interesting featurettes also. Can't wait to see how the finale turns out.
-So I devoted a good chunk of my three day weekend to catching up on some wrestling. Aside from watching the latest Smackdown & Impact. I watched the first half of the '92 Great American Bash off WWE 24/7. It had a tag team title tournament which wasn't so thrilling to watch as the redundant tag matches kept repeating themselves. I finally got around to watching disc 2 (of 3) of the new Shawn Michaels DVD set. That disc consisted entirely of matches, most of which were Rockers tag classics from the AWA and WWF days. I think that was actually the first time I watched an AWA match in its entirety. Then the disc also had some other lost treasures like the never-before-aired, erased from the record books, Rockers WWF Tag Title win over the Hart Foundation where a ring rope actually came loose and fell off in the middle of the match. There was also an amazing tag team match from the '91 Royal Rumble against the Orient Express, which still holds up suprisingly well and contains some unique and innovative spots.
Also on there was Shawn winning the IC belt from Bulldog, and Shawn winning the rapid fire 1995 Royal Rumble match (which are always a blast to see who was on the WWE's roster back in the day). Disc 3 is all his post 2002-return matches, a fortunate side effect about Shawn's four year retirement from wrestling is that it occured during that precise time frame where WWF shifted to their "scratch" logo, which is now censored because of the loss over the rights to the "WWF" initials to the World Wildlife Fund. Shawn returned to wrestling literally mere months after WWE switched to their current logo. So that means none of Shawn's matches suffer from a wealth of blur editing that plague many other WWE DVDs today.
In other wrestling news, Dick came over and we ordered Ring of Honor: Rising Above off On Demand. Great show for just $10! The card was highlighted by an amazing Nigel McGuiness/Austin Aries main event that should be seen by all. ROH is finally starting to improve their production values. They may still consider themselves an indy league, but once you're aired on PPV, base a majority of revenue on DVD sales, and start putting wrestlers under contracts, you got to up the production. Granted right now it's just baby steps with their shows now having an entrance stage and more professional lighting, but it's a long way where they were a couple years ago. Speaking of ROH, I ordered a couple more of their DVDs. They finally got a couple new big box retail releases, two discs "Stars of Honor" which consists of matches of stars now in WWE/TNA like Samoa Joe, Christian, Matt Hardy and CM Punk, and the other disc "Bloodstained Honor" contains their bloodiest brawls. Best thing about these two discs is there a deal on Amazon, I got both for $25 combined, compared to your average DVD off ROH's site which $20 plus shipping. If you ever considered giving ROH a chance, then these two discs are highly recommmended.
-I picked up Semi-Pro. First Will Ferrell movie I enjoyed a lot since Anchorman. The unrated version primarily added a little plot where Ferrell's character now was married, and they had an open relationship which resulted in some interesting scenes unfolding. On another note, I'm not a fan of paying more for digital copy special editions. Sure, if I had an iPod or other portable digital video device, I would definitely appreciate it. But I don't, and I'm a sucker for those documentary/featurette extras on special editions, and those extras aren't on the single disc versions of recent DVDs like Hitman, Juno, and Semi-Pro, so I have to shill out the extra $5-8 for the 2-disc version, and on all three of these 2-disc DVDs, the second disc is just the digital copy. This getting to anyone else?
-I ventured out to Fargo yesterday to hang out with Matt. We checked out Lego Indiana Jones, which seems like more of the same Lego goodness that Lego Star Wars brought to the table, but now with more puzzles. Taking place in the whole "boulder chase" scene was pretty fun. We watched the new Rambo flick. I only remember bits and pieces of the old Rambo trilogy since it has been years since I have seen them, but this one get a hearty thumbs up from me. It has all you want out of a mindless action picture such as a ridiculously high kill count, and buckets of gore.
-In anticipation of the new Hulk movie and game coming out (the game came out last Friday, oddly a week before the flick), I finally started up Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on the Xbox. I am in chapter two with about three hours invested thus far. I definitely like the direction this game went for, all about Hulk raising a ruckus and causing as much mayhem as possible. Ripping vehicles apart and attaching them to Hulk's fists to make them even more leathal, now that's freaking awesome. Equally so is Hulk making huge leaps off of, and running up tall skyscrapers. My only main problem with Ultimate Destruction so far is the camera can be pretty touchy and get in the way of the action from time to time. Otherwise, I'm having a riot with this, and regretting I didn't start it up earlier. I want to beat this and then check out the new game, which I watched Matt play at his place yesterday. The new Hulk game on 360 looks to go in the same direction as Ultimate Destruction, though seems a little more limited on Hulk's arsenal of destruction capabilities (which is kind of odd to admit, since Hulk can now actually demolish buildings from their foundation). Matt loved Ultimate Destruction, and says the new Hulk game is still fun, but is disappointing compared to the last game, though he admits to liking it more and more as he progresses.
-So as I hinted above, I got a good amount of DS time in while out of town. I made a lot of progress in Hotel Dusk and Mario Tennis on GBA. Mario Tennis is the same awesome Sports-RPG hybrid that the GameBoy Color version was. You level up your characters after earning experience from moving up the singles and doubles ranks, and there is even an involving story attached to the whole experience too. I also completed Super Dodge Ball Brawlers on DS, making it the 7th game I completed this year. Granted, it's main mode was a simple 10 team tournament romp against the computer AI which only took me about two hours to beat, but dammit I'm going to count it! I loved Dodge Ball on the NES, and this is the first Dodge Ball game since to capture the same amount of fun and intensity as that version.
I talk about Mario Tennis and Dodge Ball Brawlers in more detail in my latest podcast, which also has a review for the newest PC MMO, Age of Conan (download here). Speaking of the podcast, if you subscribe to the old RSS or iTunes feed, stay tuned here for a new feed link to subscribe to since I have been unable to upload to the old RSS past few weeks. Chris and I have a new site in the works for the podcast, and it should be going live within a week or two. I'll make sure to have the new feed links here as soon as they're ready, so stay tuned!
-In other gaming news, I finally got some good non-DVD, and actual game time out of my PS3 yesterday. I got my wireless connection set up to it so now I don't have to go bother switching the damn ethernet cable from the 360 to PS3 all the time now. This allowed me to finally give the new PS Store a thorough looksee. I didn't mind the old setup as much as other people, but the new store is a significant step up. It runs incredibly smoother, far easier to navigate and search through older content, and little icons let me know if I already downloaded particular items. Awesome thing about PS Store (which I'm surprised I don't hear many other people bringing up) is that all PS3 Wallpapers and Themes are free, compared to Xbox Live charging $2-$3 for nearly every damn theme they put up.
For PS3 gaming, I've been playing through the Resistance campaign in co-op with Chris, we're about halfway through. I'm having a pretty good time with it so far, I'm a nut for history so I like the alternate WWII/alien invasion route Insomniac is going with. I also finally got around to playing the second game of the MLB08 league I'm in yesterday. Mr. Torgo bested me again, 4-0, but at least I managed several hits and a couple sleek double plays in there. One of these days I got to pick up Motorstorm again, I got stuck on getting past the second event and never got back to it. I'm disappointed in myself. Speaking of rally racing games, anyone see previews for that new BaJa game? I guess the fact there's going to be a 4 hour endurance race in there has me interested in giving the game a shot. It's from the folks who worked on MX vs ATV Untamed, but it'll be minus the quads and dirt bikes which I wasn't that much a fan of in Untamed, but I had a blast with the Off Road and Monster Truck racing.
-I saved the best moment for last in the blog. A couple days ago, my buddies Scott, Chris and I got together and did the impossible. We completed the 58 song Endless Set list in Rock Band! That's 58 songs straight (we pause a few times for breaks), and it tooks us seven hours total to do, but we did the unimaginable! I never thought we would pull that off, but completing that setlist will definitely go down as one of my all time favorite gaming moments. I now have the achievement to remember it by, so make sure to look at it, and bow before its awesomeness! :)
-That ends yet another insanely long blog, later!
-Weekend before last Joey and I traversed to Montevideo and met up with the rest of my family for my niece's graduation. Joey and I were there for two days, where Mom and my two sisters were there for a few more. There was a gigantic feast at the open house, and plenty of other family and friends of my niece made the treak down to Monty too. Felt a little weird with not knowing about 80% of the 100+ people that made appearences throughout the day at the open house. Since I am so damn shy about breaking the ice in big crowds, I did the worst and drifted to the corner and conversed with my own family for most of the time. Did manage to get acquainted with a few new people I met, but for the most part I kind of drifted and played my DS. It didn't help my sleep pattern was completely thrown off track for the trip, which led to me sneaking in a nap for a couple hours during the open house. All that aside however, it was good to see my family in Monty again.
-One of my old friends moved back to Grand Forks again after being in California for four years. This town has a way of sucking people back in I noticed. Richard lasted a bit longer than I thought he would. He was down there for four years. I kept in touch with him over the years still (thank you Xbox Live), though I never really considered him more than a gaming buddy, since I mostly only did stuff with him through another friend of mine. Richard said he wanted to change his old ways and start all over again, and I don't know, it just felt odd of him thinking of me as more of a good friend than I consider him. That ever happen to anyone reading this?
Richard also got to know my brother Joey through Xbox Live, so Joey came with me to pick him up at the airport last Friday. I helped him unload his things off at his place, and gave him a quick tour to show him what was new with town since left. It'll be good to have Richard back though, that means I finally have someone to play NBA 2K8 with since Richard was one of the 3 friends who all moved around the same time that I played a majority of my sports games against.
-Damn tire on my truck was giving me trouble this past week. Got off work and noticed it nearly flat. I was contemplating replacing the tire on the spot, but I recalled that tire having a gradual leak a couple weeks ago so I very slowly, with all my weight shifted down on the opposite side of the flat, drove to the gas station across the street and aired it back up to normal again and got the tire patched up. I would rather spend $12 fixing a flat, then $80-100 replacing it.
-I finished the second season of my Extras DVD set. All I have left is the series special finale disc. Definitely dug the second series as much as the first, I love how they integrate the roles of the guest stars. I dug the concept of Andy receiving his own sitcom, which is critically panned a new one, yet manages to stay on the air due to its amazing ratings. Though I am glad the season was only six episodes like the first. I was losing it in the last couple episodes at how repetitive the series was. "Andy confides in Maggie an embarrasing old secret, Maggie later carelessly reveals secret to Andy's nemesis, Andy suffers horribly." It got tough to watch the last couple episodes, but thankfully the show did a complete 180 on its season finale, which made it seem worthwhile enduring the repetitive plots. The special features are also a step up from the first season, as there is a behind-the-scenes feature for every episode, and a couple other interesting featurettes also. Can't wait to see how the finale turns out.
-So I devoted a good chunk of my three day weekend to catching up on some wrestling. Aside from watching the latest Smackdown & Impact. I watched the first half of the '92 Great American Bash off WWE 24/7. It had a tag team title tournament which wasn't so thrilling to watch as the redundant tag matches kept repeating themselves. I finally got around to watching disc 2 (of 3) of the new Shawn Michaels DVD set. That disc consisted entirely of matches, most of which were Rockers tag classics from the AWA and WWF days. I think that was actually the first time I watched an AWA match in its entirety. Then the disc also had some other lost treasures like the never-before-aired, erased from the record books, Rockers WWF Tag Title win over the Hart Foundation where a ring rope actually came loose and fell off in the middle of the match. There was also an amazing tag team match from the '91 Royal Rumble against the Orient Express, which still holds up suprisingly well and contains some unique and innovative spots.
Also on there was Shawn winning the IC belt from Bulldog, and Shawn winning the rapid fire 1995 Royal Rumble match (which are always a blast to see who was on the WWE's roster back in the day). Disc 3 is all his post 2002-return matches, a fortunate side effect about Shawn's four year retirement from wrestling is that it occured during that precise time frame where WWF shifted to their "scratch" logo, which is now censored because of the loss over the rights to the "WWF" initials to the World Wildlife Fund. Shawn returned to wrestling literally mere months after WWE switched to their current logo. So that means none of Shawn's matches suffer from a wealth of blur editing that plague many other WWE DVDs today.
In other wrestling news, Dick came over and we ordered Ring of Honor: Rising Above off On Demand. Great show for just $10! The card was highlighted by an amazing Nigel McGuiness/Austin Aries main event that should be seen by all. ROH is finally starting to improve their production values. They may still consider themselves an indy league, but once you're aired on PPV, base a majority of revenue on DVD sales, and start putting wrestlers under contracts, you got to up the production. Granted right now it's just baby steps with their shows now having an entrance stage and more professional lighting, but it's a long way where they were a couple years ago. Speaking of ROH, I ordered a couple more of their DVDs. They finally got a couple new big box retail releases, two discs "Stars of Honor" which consists of matches of stars now in WWE/TNA like Samoa Joe, Christian, Matt Hardy and CM Punk, and the other disc "Bloodstained Honor" contains their bloodiest brawls. Best thing about these two discs is there a deal on Amazon, I got both for $25 combined, compared to your average DVD off ROH's site which $20 plus shipping. If you ever considered giving ROH a chance, then these two discs are highly recommmended.
-I picked up Semi-Pro. First Will Ferrell movie I enjoyed a lot since Anchorman. The unrated version primarily added a little plot where Ferrell's character now was married, and they had an open relationship which resulted in some interesting scenes unfolding. On another note, I'm not a fan of paying more for digital copy special editions. Sure, if I had an iPod or other portable digital video device, I would definitely appreciate it. But I don't, and I'm a sucker for those documentary/featurette extras on special editions, and those extras aren't on the single disc versions of recent DVDs like Hitman, Juno, and Semi-Pro, so I have to shill out the extra $5-8 for the 2-disc version, and on all three of these 2-disc DVDs, the second disc is just the digital copy. This getting to anyone else?
-I ventured out to Fargo yesterday to hang out with Matt. We checked out Lego Indiana Jones, which seems like more of the same Lego goodness that Lego Star Wars brought to the table, but now with more puzzles. Taking place in the whole "boulder chase" scene was pretty fun. We watched the new Rambo flick. I only remember bits and pieces of the old Rambo trilogy since it has been years since I have seen them, but this one get a hearty thumbs up from me. It has all you want out of a mindless action picture such as a ridiculously high kill count, and buckets of gore.
-In anticipation of the new Hulk movie and game coming out (the game came out last Friday, oddly a week before the flick), I finally started up Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on the Xbox. I am in chapter two with about three hours invested thus far. I definitely like the direction this game went for, all about Hulk raising a ruckus and causing as much mayhem as possible. Ripping vehicles apart and attaching them to Hulk's fists to make them even more leathal, now that's freaking awesome. Equally so is Hulk making huge leaps off of, and running up tall skyscrapers. My only main problem with Ultimate Destruction so far is the camera can be pretty touchy and get in the way of the action from time to time. Otherwise, I'm having a riot with this, and regretting I didn't start it up earlier. I want to beat this and then check out the new game, which I watched Matt play at his place yesterday. The new Hulk game on 360 looks to go in the same direction as Ultimate Destruction, though seems a little more limited on Hulk's arsenal of destruction capabilities (which is kind of odd to admit, since Hulk can now actually demolish buildings from their foundation). Matt loved Ultimate Destruction, and says the new Hulk game is still fun, but is disappointing compared to the last game, though he admits to liking it more and more as he progresses.
-So as I hinted above, I got a good amount of DS time in while out of town. I made a lot of progress in Hotel Dusk and Mario Tennis on GBA. Mario Tennis is the same awesome Sports-RPG hybrid that the GameBoy Color version was. You level up your characters after earning experience from moving up the singles and doubles ranks, and there is even an involving story attached to the whole experience too. I also completed Super Dodge Ball Brawlers on DS, making it the 7th game I completed this year. Granted, it's main mode was a simple 10 team tournament romp against the computer AI which only took me about two hours to beat, but dammit I'm going to count it! I loved Dodge Ball on the NES, and this is the first Dodge Ball game since to capture the same amount of fun and intensity as that version.
I talk about Mario Tennis and Dodge Ball Brawlers in more detail in my latest podcast, which also has a review for the newest PC MMO, Age of Conan (download here). Speaking of the podcast, if you subscribe to the old RSS or iTunes feed, stay tuned here for a new feed link to subscribe to since I have been unable to upload to the old RSS past few weeks. Chris and I have a new site in the works for the podcast, and it should be going live within a week or two. I'll make sure to have the new feed links here as soon as they're ready, so stay tuned!
-In other gaming news, I finally got some good non-DVD, and actual game time out of my PS3 yesterday. I got my wireless connection set up to it so now I don't have to go bother switching the damn ethernet cable from the 360 to PS3 all the time now. This allowed me to finally give the new PS Store a thorough looksee. I didn't mind the old setup as much as other people, but the new store is a significant step up. It runs incredibly smoother, far easier to navigate and search through older content, and little icons let me know if I already downloaded particular items. Awesome thing about PS Store (which I'm surprised I don't hear many other people bringing up) is that all PS3 Wallpapers and Themes are free, compared to Xbox Live charging $2-$3 for nearly every damn theme they put up.
For PS3 gaming, I've been playing through the Resistance campaign in co-op with Chris, we're about halfway through. I'm having a pretty good time with it so far, I'm a nut for history so I like the alternate WWII/alien invasion route Insomniac is going with. I also finally got around to playing the second game of the MLB08 league I'm in yesterday. Mr. Torgo bested me again, 4-0, but at least I managed several hits and a couple sleek double plays in there. One of these days I got to pick up Motorstorm again, I got stuck on getting past the second event and never got back to it. I'm disappointed in myself. Speaking of rally racing games, anyone see previews for that new BaJa game? I guess the fact there's going to be a 4 hour endurance race in there has me interested in giving the game a shot. It's from the folks who worked on MX vs ATV Untamed, but it'll be minus the quads and dirt bikes which I wasn't that much a fan of in Untamed, but I had a blast with the Off Road and Monster Truck racing.
-I saved the best moment for last in the blog. A couple days ago, my buddies Scott, Chris and I got together and did the impossible. We completed the 58 song Endless Set list in Rock Band! That's 58 songs straight (we pause a few times for breaks), and it tooks us seven hours total to do, but we did the unimaginable! I never thought we would pull that off, but completing that setlist will definitely go down as one of my all time favorite gaming moments. I now have the achievement to remember it by, so make sure to look at it, and bow before its awesomeness! :)
-That ends yet another insanely long blog, later!
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