Welcome to hell!!!

-Howdy one and all, pardon another late blog update, I hope that games completed list I posted a couple days ago helped tide things by. But in the past day and a half since I posted that update, I have knocked out game #13 of the year: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Scott and I put a couple more hours and reach the final area after a total of nearly 13 hours of gameplay. Damn, was that final boss Eldrith a bitch however, she tosses this sword like a boomerang and if you don't block the throw, it yields an instant death.

-So if you can't tell by the above pic, I got the opportunity to hit up a Renaissance fair last weekend. Our campus was hosting a field trip down to the Twin Cities to check out the Renaissance fair and the Minnesota Science Museum. It was actually a pretty good deal where the campus covered meals, hotel and admission to activities. The science museum wasn't anything spectacular, but it had a few neat things to check out such as an awesome Omni-theater which has got to be by far the biggest screen I have ever seen a film on.

The Renaissance fair was badass though, not as amazing of a time as the one I hit up in California in 2003 (that one had a joust!), but this one still held its own and then some. I got to know a couple other classmates on the bus ride down, Rachel & Jake, well enough and hit up most of the fair with them. I fenced with Jake, and he proceeded to instantly romp me. However I did redeem myself by dunking a "wench" in a tank of water on my very first throw. The food is awesome there too, but after searching forever I gave up on my 2003 favorite, Steak on a Stake and settled with some Cheese Curds....of course not even moments later I finally discovered the Steak on a Stake. If you want to see the rest of my pics from my trek to the fair click here.

-I spent a lot of that time on the road catching up on a couple handheld games. Went up the ranks in a couple ladders in Mario Tennis on GBA, one of my favorite GBA titles. Those Camelot developed Mario sports games on the GBC and GBA are a blast. I know Camelot made a lot of arcadey and intuitive games on consoles like the earlier Hot Shots Golf titles, and the Mario Tennis & Golf installments on N64 and GameCube. However, the the ones on GameBoy still have that pick up and play action, but also mix in a fair amount of RPG elements like leveling up your player to boost his stats, and even an involving storyline to immerse yourself in. Other than Mario Tennis and a smidgin' of Tetris DS, I put in a lot of time into Hotel Dusk. I finally got past a hiccup I left off on a few month back, and am now at chapter 5 in that game. Something about Hotel Dusk that works for me with its unique art style, the detailed to a T storyline (lots of reading in this one), and how like-able nearly all the cast of characters are that just gel together to create a unique experience and setting that seems fresh among past games I've played.

-The last two episodes of On Tap have been real doozies. I have finally got around to doing something I have had in the works for over a year. Much like last year how I had a multi-part retrospective on the history of wrestling video games, this year I started one on the history of RPG games. We got two episodes in the bag so far, and I had some great guest hosts come on board for them. For On Tap episode 72 (right click download), I had Mark come on from the PSnation podcast and we dedicated that episode to remembering RPGs on the 8-bit era platforms such as the NES & Master System, and since Mark has a lot of knowledge on TurboGrafx games, we covered those in part one also. For part 2 (right click download), the other host of PSnation, Glenn and Scott from the Gamers Only Older podcast make it on to join Chris & I in covering old school PC RPGs, and the 16-bit wars of some of the best RPGs to appear on SNES & Genesis. I've had a lot of fun doing these episodes and can't wait to do the future installments, if you have the time please give them a listen!

-In other video game happenings, Rock Band 2 hit stores a week ago and I made sure to pick that up day one. For the most part it is the same old Rock Band we know and love, with a slightly retooled World Tour mode that now has separate challenges and online Battle of the Band challenges for added competition. Still have to check out a lot more for what it has to offer. As awesome as Rock Band 2 is, I was more psyched when I got my Ion Drum Rocker in the mail a few days later. Yes, it is the overpriced drum set for Rock Band 2, which also acts as an electronic drum kit. One of my coworkers, David brought over his electronic drum module and hooked it up and it worked perfectly with it.

The drum kit itself is top quality all around, and it shows by taking me nearly three hours to assemble. The new rubber pads still make a noticeable amount of noise, yet considerably less compared to the old Rock Band drums, and they provide more of a bounce to the drum sticks to boot. I also like how all the drum pads are totally adjustable so they can be placed to the ideal position, though the trade off is that the new drums take considerably more space, but it's a trade off that is worth it in my opinion! I still find myself getting use to whaling away on the cymbals after spending nearly a year playing without them, so far I find myself using the green cymbal more than the yellow one, the cymbals don't have to be attached either. I may remove them down the line if I don't find myself taking advantage of them often.

-Last couple of loose ends I want to touch on in gaming, I got fed up with Too Human and returned it to GameFly. I was determined to beat it with the Berserker, but that type of class just didn't gel well for this game, which is weird considering it's a hack 'n slash style dungeon crawler. I heard some of the other magic-focused classes worked far better in Too Human, and I was considering starting over but opted against it after seeing that excruciatingly long death sequence far too many times. Lastly, Joey finally got a PS3, and was eagerly anticipating the SOCOM Beta that he got access into with his preorder, turns out up to two people can use the beta download code and he got me in too. I played some with him yesterday, but the games we went into suffered from bouts of lag and other glitches which had me worried for the final product. I don't expect Sony to rush out a glitched product though, so I have high hopes this will come out with finely polished online play.

-After a lot of reluctance, I finally ordered Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition (scoring a great deal off buy.com helped ease me into the purchase too). Got the core book set in in the mail a few days ago, and one day I will be determined enough to learn the tabletop classic and get in some good play sessions. Any DnD players here with advice for noobs as myself?

-In tv news I have been plugging away at Seinfeld 7th season DVD past couple of months. Am on the third disc now, and am still loving the show as much as the last few seasons before it. Long time readers of the blog will recall me being a huge Shield fan, and they are three episodes into their 7th and final season. The Shield kicks ass, best cop show I have ever seen, there is something about it with how awesome the characters are, the production style and the story arcs that have me craving each and every episode. I'm going to miss this series big time when it's gone, if you haven't checked out the show yet you are missing out.

-Niners are 2-1, huzzah! To my surprise JT O Sullivan has proved serviceable out there, and may turn out to be a pretty decent QB. Too bad about Alex Smith though, I think that is more of the 49ers fault however than Alex's.

-I'm going to touch on some wrestling to wrap up another insanely long blog. WWE 24/7 usually releases one of their awesome Legends of Wrestling roundtable segments every two or three months, but this last month they put out two specials! One dedicated to Ric Flair & Sgt. Slaughter, and the other about factions in wrestling. when we covered the factions special on my latest wrestling podcast episode, it led to a great discussion on our own favorite and worst factions. I finished the Mr. Perfect documentary, another fine documentary put together by WWE's production team. Still have to plow through the matches however, but I did watch all the classic Mr. Perfect vignettes that introduced the Mr. Perfect character into the WWE universe. Finally, how about that big blowoff segment on Impact last week. Jarrett gave a damn good promo (even though I disagreed with a fair amount of what he had to say), which concluded with the debut of Mick Foley. Impact has been surprisingly good again last couple of episodes, let's see if Mr. Russo can keep it going.

-I'm done, sorry for another crazy long post. Later!