Wednesday, August 20, 2008
-Hello everybody! Last year of classes starts up next week. Summer didn't seem to fly by as fast as it did in past years, seems like I got to go out and partake in a few fun summer activities such as a couple concerts, and trips down to visit family. Now I know it has been a little longer than usual since my last post, so prepare for another incredibly long and boring update!
-I saw some of the latest summer flicks over the past couple weeks. Stepbrothers turned out to be a heck of a lot better than I thought it would. Other than Semi-Pro (because I'm a sucker for sports flicks), the last few Will Ferell movies just didn't deliver for me, or didn't interest me to catch them in the theater. Stepbrothers seemed like yet another corny, over-the-top Will Ferrell piece, but after hearing enough good things I finally decided to go out and chance it. I'm glad that I did decide to give the film a shot, because it was the funniest flick I've seen this year since Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Besides the awesome bunk bed spot as seen on the trailer, this film had lots of hilarious moments, including some unexpected cameos. Ferrell and Reilly do an awesome job and play off each other far better than they did in Talledega Nights. This is a definite must see for all! 9.5/10
A few days ago I went out and saw Tropic Thunder with my brother and father. Not to sound like a broken record, but like Stepbrothers, upon seeing the trailer I immediately brushed it off as another zany flick that looked like it tried to do everything. How wrong I was. Great job but all the leads, but Stiller stole the show for me. The way he plays into his "Simple Jack" character is awesome, and damn did Tom Cruise make his presence known as the greedy studio executive. I wouldn't say this was as good as Stepbrothers, but still highly recommend checking this one out. 8.5/10
-I finally finished Maddox's book, "The Alphabet of Manliness." A few times a month I would sit down and read a few pages and here there, and I think that is how I would recommend reading this book. It seems everyone these days (sans me) has some unique wit or style of humor in their blogs, but there is something about Maddox's style that makes him stand out above the rest. Whether it be "L for lumberjacks" or "Z for zombies," every chapter cotained vital amounts of useful information. If you're a fan of the The Best Webpage in the Universe, than you are doing Maddox wrong by not purchasing his book. A few weeks ago I started up Kevin Smith's collection of blogs entitled, "My Boring-Ass Life." About 60 pages in so far, and aside from his routine day-to-day happenings, I'm intrigued at how things are shaping up so far about him prepping up shooting for Clerks 2, auditioning for Catch & Release, and his online gambling addiction.
But damn is it going to take forever to read his two years worth of blogs. Speaking of long lasting blogs, this month marks the five year anniversary of this blog! I still can't believe I've been blogging for this long. What seemed like a quick fad on the GameFAQs Reviewers board, has led into a weekly habit for me. I believe the first year or two I was averaging around 3 posts a week, but have cooled off a lot since then to a more manageable 3-4 times a month now. I hate to admit this, but I have actually printed off all my blogs (up to a few months ago anyways), and plan on doing a crazy marathong refreshing on all the events that took place in my life. I don't know who here (if anyone) has been able to keep up with most of my blogs for the past 5 years, but if so please post so I can give you a shoutout!
-I'm super psyched about the final season of The Shield starting up next month. About a half a year past its usual season start date due to the writers strike. I'm worried about trying to tape all the episodes, I'm hoping hulu.com is going to be posting episodes since I notice they post most of the other FOX series, but I haven't seen any older episodes of The Shield posted there yet. If anyone knows for sure, please post with a heads up!
-Last Saturday I helped Ann move to her new apartment. She now lives right down the block from Scott! Joey and I, along with a few of Ann's friends knocked out the move in a solid four or five hours. Involved two Uhaul trips actually, which didn't make things that pleasent in the 80 degree+ heat.
-I took the plunge on two expensive purchases recently. One being the uber-expensive $300 Ion Drums for Rock Band 2 (also compatible with Guitar Hero IV thank god!). At that Alice Cooper concert, I was watching the opening band's drummer wail away and having a blast of a time, and it just kinda clicked right there that I wanted to experience that, and there was no way I could do that with the current symbol-less & super-loud drums I have currently. So I put the preorder down and should be receiving the drums around the time the game ships next month.
The other purchase I made (or actually plan on making later today) is an 80gb Zune. It seems nearly everyone I tell I plan on getting a Zune give me a "You got to be fucking kidding look." I tried a Zune on display, and love the UI, plus not having to worry about converting all my MP3s into the iPods format is a blessing. The 80gb sku has been received well from the reviews I read too. I've been meaning to upgrade for awhile now from the 8gb player I've had for about two years now. Now I can finally take advantage of those stupid DVDs that forced me to pay more for their special editions by forcing the digital copy disc on me by putting all those digital copy movies on the Zune.
-On Sunday I held a Summerslam PPV party. Dave, Dick & Paul made it up. Turned into a pretty solid show. Happy to see Batista kill Cena with two Batista-bombs! Edge & Undertaker stole the show though with their brutal Hell in a Cell match. Some nice spots, and damn did Taker bury Edge with the post-match embalming! I actually did a write-up for Summerslam on another site, you can check out by clicking here!
-That Summerslam write up I did was for the new website, robotpanic.com. The site formerly home to the crew of teamfremont.com, who obliterated the site and forums I purused so many hours of my life at in a gigantic explosion! I'm going to miss the forums there, but it is nice to focus most of my attention on a single gaming forum again. However, I think it is all worth it as I love the direction of Robot Panic! It's a multimedia blog, that covers more than videogames, but essentially all things geek. If you go there now you'll see fan made guitar covers for songs featured in FFVIII and F-Zero, highlights from the niche' magazine Girls & Corpses, a review of the greatest CCG known to man, and much much more.
-I finally accomplished what I thought was unachievable for me. I completed my first Japanese RPG, the 38 hour experience only took me about eleven months! The game in question is Eternal Sonata for the Xbox 360, making it game #11 completed of the year! For longtime listeners of my podcast will know, that game always popped up on the "what we've been playing" segment of our show on nearly every other episode. That's because it was one of those games I would throw in for just a couple hours once or twice a month. The last few weeks that all changed though as I played it more and more to meet my goal of completing it before the school year. Very satisfied with the game, some pacing issues with the story, and major issues with the crazy 45 minute ending left it from being a masterpiece, but I still enjoyed a lot of the game.
The unique story, artsy graphics, and one of the best battle systems I have encountered in RPGs turned this into a grand experience for me. If you’re too impatient, or don’t want to shell out $60 for the upcoming PS3 deluxe edition that features more playable characters, dungeons, and quests, than you can run across the 360 version in most used shops for under $30. Now I'm not an RPG guru, and have only put serious playtime into several RPGs prior to this, so don't take my gushing too seriously if you expect the very best out of each and every RPG you play.
-I also conquered another game just hours prior, making Superman Returns game #12 completed of the year. What's that? You ask why would I bother to play a year and a half old movie licensed game? Well, first off, Superman Returns isn't that bad. It's all right (I believe it's the only Superman game I've played that comes to mind so I can't compare it to Superman 64 regrettably). Has its problem, but ultimately it's just another average movie licensed game that took only five and a half hours to beat. I actually played a bit of it last year than traded the game in. Found out I only had a little over an hour left to play, then noticed my brother bought the game, so I borrowed it from him a couple months ago and finally got around to throwing it in and beating it over the past two days.
-I have been playing a ton of Rock Band trying to knock out as many achievements as I can lately before the sequel hits in a few weeks. I finally got the last online achievement which was "Win 20 Tug of War Ranked Matches." Took about 10 losses along the way, and combined with the online Score Duel matches I played to get the 20 Score Duel wins achievement, I want to say I played roughly 65-70 online matches of Rock Band. I bring this up because of the rarity of running across DLC while playin online. After putting this much time into online, I can safely say downloaded songs only occur if both players happen to own the same song. I own over 50 downloaded songs, and of the 65-70 online duels I had, downloaded songs only popped up on three, yes three, separate occasions. I don't know if it's possible for Rock Band to implement the song to stream for players on the other end who don't own DLC tracks, but they should if the technology exists as I think it would be a tremendous way to preview the track.
I knocked out two more Rock Band achievements I'm mighty proud of over the weekend. 100% notes on Guitar and Bass, up strums only on EXPERT!!! Of course I nailed both achievements by playing on first-tier difficulty songs, but it was still on expert and took me a couple dozen tries to get both. The bass achievement I actually got on my fourth or fifth try on Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go." The 100% on guitar proved far more difficult, and took me around 20-25 tries (probably more) on the DLC track, Police's "Roxanne." I don't know if I should even attempt it on drums, I only got 100% on drums once (on Paramore's "Crushcrushcrush" on medium), but the guys on the OXM Podcast said they accomplished it on a DLC track by The Pretenders.
-I had a pretty good gaming session with Richard, aka, Rocket a few days ago. Him and Joey strolled by on the weekend and I had my first great multiplayer session in months. We started things off by playing Monster Madness on 360. That game is quite buggy and has a shit camera, but its Zombie Ate my Neighbors meet hack 'n slash hybrid keeps me coming back. The PS3 version recently releases alleviates some of these problems I read, so once that goes down in price I'll probably pick that game up. After that we were going to set up the classic board game Risk until Joe reminded me I had the PS2 version, so the three of us waged world war until I proved victorious! Joe left after getting whooped, so Richard and I then faced off in Madden 08, and in which I was victorious again in a 38-14 win with the Patriot over the Chargers. Then we faced off in NBA 2K8, and we had two very close games, but both saw my friend getting the win. Finally started getting the hang of 2K8 after that game, forgot how much I enjoyed 2K basketball. I need to do more of these game nights, online multiplayer is convenient when playing with friends across the globe, but nothing beats the trash talk with friends right on your very own couch.
-Rock 30 Games, the local used game shop moved across town right inbetween two Gamestops that are with literally three minutes of each other. I went there today and the layout is still quite similar to their old location. I picked up Guilty Gear X2 #Reload while I was there since it was $9 compared to the $15 it goes for download now on the Live Marketplace. I recall good times with the craziness of Guilty Gear X on PS2 and wanted to experience the mayhem again so I played with my brother shortly after picking it up. Joe didn't like it that much, but I did and forgot how much fun the peculiar chaos that Guilty Gear is. Didn't have time to practice and completely re-learn the controls, but trying several tried and true sequences had my character executing one of the many off-the-wall moves in no time. Anyone else here Guilty Gear fans?
-Finally, I'm done, sorry for another crazy long entry. Self high-five if you read it all!
-I saw some of the latest summer flicks over the past couple weeks. Stepbrothers turned out to be a heck of a lot better than I thought it would. Other than Semi-Pro (because I'm a sucker for sports flicks), the last few Will Ferell movies just didn't deliver for me, or didn't interest me to catch them in the theater. Stepbrothers seemed like yet another corny, over-the-top Will Ferrell piece, but after hearing enough good things I finally decided to go out and chance it. I'm glad that I did decide to give the film a shot, because it was the funniest flick I've seen this year since Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Besides the awesome bunk bed spot as seen on the trailer, this film had lots of hilarious moments, including some unexpected cameos. Ferrell and Reilly do an awesome job and play off each other far better than they did in Talledega Nights. This is a definite must see for all! 9.5/10
A few days ago I went out and saw Tropic Thunder with my brother and father. Not to sound like a broken record, but like Stepbrothers, upon seeing the trailer I immediately brushed it off as another zany flick that looked like it tried to do everything. How wrong I was. Great job but all the leads, but Stiller stole the show for me. The way he plays into his "Simple Jack" character is awesome, and damn did Tom Cruise make his presence known as the greedy studio executive. I wouldn't say this was as good as Stepbrothers, but still highly recommend checking this one out. 8.5/10
-I finally finished Maddox's book, "The Alphabet of Manliness." A few times a month I would sit down and read a few pages and here there, and I think that is how I would recommend reading this book. It seems everyone these days (sans me) has some unique wit or style of humor in their blogs, but there is something about Maddox's style that makes him stand out above the rest. Whether it be "L for lumberjacks" or "Z for zombies," every chapter cotained vital amounts of useful information. If you're a fan of the The Best Webpage in the Universe, than you are doing Maddox wrong by not purchasing his book. A few weeks ago I started up Kevin Smith's collection of blogs entitled, "My Boring-Ass Life." About 60 pages in so far, and aside from his routine day-to-day happenings, I'm intrigued at how things are shaping up so far about him prepping up shooting for Clerks 2, auditioning for Catch & Release, and his online gambling addiction.
But damn is it going to take forever to read his two years worth of blogs. Speaking of long lasting blogs, this month marks the five year anniversary of this blog! I still can't believe I've been blogging for this long. What seemed like a quick fad on the GameFAQs Reviewers board, has led into a weekly habit for me. I believe the first year or two I was averaging around 3 posts a week, but have cooled off a lot since then to a more manageable 3-4 times a month now. I hate to admit this, but I have actually printed off all my blogs (up to a few months ago anyways), and plan on doing a crazy marathong refreshing on all the events that took place in my life. I don't know who here (if anyone) has been able to keep up with most of my blogs for the past 5 years, but if so please post so I can give you a shoutout!
-I'm super psyched about the final season of The Shield starting up next month. About a half a year past its usual season start date due to the writers strike. I'm worried about trying to tape all the episodes, I'm hoping hulu.com is going to be posting episodes since I notice they post most of the other FOX series, but I haven't seen any older episodes of The Shield posted there yet. If anyone knows for sure, please post with a heads up!
-Last Saturday I helped Ann move to her new apartment. She now lives right down the block from Scott! Joey and I, along with a few of Ann's friends knocked out the move in a solid four or five hours. Involved two Uhaul trips actually, which didn't make things that pleasent in the 80 degree+ heat.
-I took the plunge on two expensive purchases recently. One being the uber-expensive $300 Ion Drums for Rock Band 2 (also compatible with Guitar Hero IV thank god!). At that Alice Cooper concert, I was watching the opening band's drummer wail away and having a blast of a time, and it just kinda clicked right there that I wanted to experience that, and there was no way I could do that with the current symbol-less & super-loud drums I have currently. So I put the preorder down and should be receiving the drums around the time the game ships next month.
The other purchase I made (or actually plan on making later today) is an 80gb Zune. It seems nearly everyone I tell I plan on getting a Zune give me a "You got to be fucking kidding look." I tried a Zune on display, and love the UI, plus not having to worry about converting all my MP3s into the iPods format is a blessing. The 80gb sku has been received well from the reviews I read too. I've been meaning to upgrade for awhile now from the 8gb player I've had for about two years now. Now I can finally take advantage of those stupid DVDs that forced me to pay more for their special editions by forcing the digital copy disc on me by putting all those digital copy movies on the Zune.
-On Sunday I held a Summerslam PPV party. Dave, Dick & Paul made it up. Turned into a pretty solid show. Happy to see Batista kill Cena with two Batista-bombs! Edge & Undertaker stole the show though with their brutal Hell in a Cell match. Some nice spots, and damn did Taker bury Edge with the post-match embalming! I actually did a write-up for Summerslam on another site, you can check out by clicking here!
-That Summerslam write up I did was for the new website, robotpanic.com. The site formerly home to the crew of teamfremont.com, who obliterated the site and forums I purused so many hours of my life at in a gigantic explosion! I'm going to miss the forums there, but it is nice to focus most of my attention on a single gaming forum again. However, I think it is all worth it as I love the direction of Robot Panic! It's a multimedia blog, that covers more than videogames, but essentially all things geek. If you go there now you'll see fan made guitar covers for songs featured in FFVIII and F-Zero, highlights from the niche' magazine Girls & Corpses, a review of the greatest CCG known to man, and much much more.
-I finally accomplished what I thought was unachievable for me. I completed my first Japanese RPG, the 38 hour experience only took me about eleven months! The game in question is Eternal Sonata for the Xbox 360, making it game #11 completed of the year! For longtime listeners of my podcast will know, that game always popped up on the "what we've been playing" segment of our show on nearly every other episode. That's because it was one of those games I would throw in for just a couple hours once or twice a month. The last few weeks that all changed though as I played it more and more to meet my goal of completing it before the school year. Very satisfied with the game, some pacing issues with the story, and major issues with the crazy 45 minute ending left it from being a masterpiece, but I still enjoyed a lot of the game.
The unique story, artsy graphics, and one of the best battle systems I have encountered in RPGs turned this into a grand experience for me. If you’re too impatient, or don’t want to shell out $60 for the upcoming PS3 deluxe edition that features more playable characters, dungeons, and quests, than you can run across the 360 version in most used shops for under $30. Now I'm not an RPG guru, and have only put serious playtime into several RPGs prior to this, so don't take my gushing too seriously if you expect the very best out of each and every RPG you play.
-I also conquered another game just hours prior, making Superman Returns game #12 completed of the year. What's that? You ask why would I bother to play a year and a half old movie licensed game? Well, first off, Superman Returns isn't that bad. It's all right (I believe it's the only Superman game I've played that comes to mind so I can't compare it to Superman 64 regrettably). Has its problem, but ultimately it's just another average movie licensed game that took only five and a half hours to beat. I actually played a bit of it last year than traded the game in. Found out I only had a little over an hour left to play, then noticed my brother bought the game, so I borrowed it from him a couple months ago and finally got around to throwing it in and beating it over the past two days.
-I have been playing a ton of Rock Band trying to knock out as many achievements as I can lately before the sequel hits in a few weeks. I finally got the last online achievement which was "Win 20 Tug of War Ranked Matches." Took about 10 losses along the way, and combined with the online Score Duel matches I played to get the 20 Score Duel wins achievement, I want to say I played roughly 65-70 online matches of Rock Band. I bring this up because of the rarity of running across DLC while playin online. After putting this much time into online, I can safely say downloaded songs only occur if both players happen to own the same song. I own over 50 downloaded songs, and of the 65-70 online duels I had, downloaded songs only popped up on three, yes three, separate occasions. I don't know if it's possible for Rock Band to implement the song to stream for players on the other end who don't own DLC tracks, but they should if the technology exists as I think it would be a tremendous way to preview the track.
I knocked out two more Rock Band achievements I'm mighty proud of over the weekend. 100% notes on Guitar and Bass, up strums only on EXPERT!!! Of course I nailed both achievements by playing on first-tier difficulty songs, but it was still on expert and took me a couple dozen tries to get both. The bass achievement I actually got on my fourth or fifth try on Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go." The 100% on guitar proved far more difficult, and took me around 20-25 tries (probably more) on the DLC track, Police's "Roxanne." I don't know if I should even attempt it on drums, I only got 100% on drums once (on Paramore's "Crushcrushcrush" on medium), but the guys on the OXM Podcast said they accomplished it on a DLC track by The Pretenders.
-I had a pretty good gaming session with Richard, aka, Rocket a few days ago. Him and Joey strolled by on the weekend and I had my first great multiplayer session in months. We started things off by playing Monster Madness on 360. That game is quite buggy and has a shit camera, but its Zombie Ate my Neighbors meet hack 'n slash hybrid keeps me coming back. The PS3 version recently releases alleviates some of these problems I read, so once that goes down in price I'll probably pick that game up. After that we were going to set up the classic board game Risk until Joe reminded me I had the PS2 version, so the three of us waged world war until I proved victorious! Joe left after getting whooped, so Richard and I then faced off in Madden 08, and in which I was victorious again in a 38-14 win with the Patriot over the Chargers. Then we faced off in NBA 2K8, and we had two very close games, but both saw my friend getting the win. Finally started getting the hang of 2K8 after that game, forgot how much I enjoyed 2K basketball. I need to do more of these game nights, online multiplayer is convenient when playing with friends across the globe, but nothing beats the trash talk with friends right on your very own couch.
-Rock 30 Games, the local used game shop moved across town right inbetween two Gamestops that are with literally three minutes of each other. I went there today and the layout is still quite similar to their old location. I picked up Guilty Gear X2 #Reload while I was there since it was $9 compared to the $15 it goes for download now on the Live Marketplace. I recall good times with the craziness of Guilty Gear X on PS2 and wanted to experience the mayhem again so I played with my brother shortly after picking it up. Joe didn't like it that much, but I did and forgot how much fun the peculiar chaos that Guilty Gear is. Didn't have time to practice and completely re-learn the controls, but trying several tried and true sequences had my character executing one of the many off-the-wall moves in no time. Anyone else here Guilty Gear fans?
-Finally, I'm done, sorry for another crazy long entry. Self high-five if you read it all!
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