Monday, May 04, 2009
-Hey Yo! I know, it has been awhile since my last update, I swear Twitter and Facebook's status updates have only helped in increasingly slowdown in blogs. Perhaps for the better?
-I finish up my classes a week from now. I have probably stated it before here, but I will say it again, damn have those four years flew by! I had one of my finals today, and the other two in a week, and as far I know I believe I will finish with all As. Nice that it is finally over, it will not be nice paying back all those student loans. Family is throwing me a graduation party, so I have been busy planning that out recently.
The final I had today was for my Voice class, and it consisted of going to a senior center and singing in front of about 30-40 people. Our teacher, Vanessa did a tremendous job prepping us up for it the last few weeks and explaining the proper way to do introductions, exits and all sorts of mic techniques. There was only one other person in my voice class (we started the semester with only four of us), so Vanessa brought a few of her students from her other choir class on another campus along so there was five of us singing. I sang two songs: "The Water is Wide" and "Any Dream Will Do." I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be considering other than drunken karaoke this was my first time doing an actual performance in front of a crowd. Considering I went into the class with essentially no legitimate singing training prior, I think I did all right, and Vanessa thinks I have come quite a ways since when I started too, so huzzah for progress! The other students all did bang up jobs too, and we met up for some shakes after the concert. That was probably the one of the most unique classes I took throughout college, and dare I say I quite a bit of fun throughout.
-Caught a bunch of flicks again since the last blog. Here are some rapid fire thoughts - Crank 2 is just as crazy awesome as the first. I hear both wild praise and hate for the Crank films, for the haters please just turn off your mind and accept the craziness for what it is! Netflick'd Solomon Brothers at the recommendation of Matt, I was a little reluctant on seeing it after the trailer as the main characters seemed way too hokey for my likes, but they somehow made it work, and it resulted in one of the off extraordinary comedies I have seen in a while. Choke on the other hand is a darker comedy, I read the book awhile back upon its release and ate it up like most of Chuck Palahnuick's works. Film was pretty good, not as good an adaption as Fight Club, but still a fun flick regardless. I hope Lullaby or Survivor receives the next silver screen treatment for Palahnuick. Lastly, I saw X-Men Origins, and yeah it continues the trend of crap that started with X3. Actually, it was not that bad, really good action and CG, but the film goes way off kilter from the comic at a lot of points and skips a lot of ground. I ponder if there will be a crazy three hour director's cut of the film, please let that be the case!
-After seeing the Wolverine movie it did get me craving some more X-Men goodness. I rented the new Wolverine game for 360, and while it is not the end-all be-all licensed game, it is leagues better than most crap out there. 'Tiz a fun hack 'n slasher like God of War/Conan. A few weeks back I beat X-Men 2: Clone Wars on Genesis making it game #7 beaten this year! Thank you invincibility code, but curse you evil jumping platform section! I'm way behind Matt though who recently told me his count is currently at 31. Comic related, I ordered the Messiah Complex trade paperback recently at Matt's recommendation who said it is one of the best X-Men stories yet. In a final bit of X-Men nostalgia, and hopefully people reading this noticed this too, they finally released the first batch of early to mid-90s X-Men cartoons on DVD. This was one of the cartoons I craved growing up and eagerly anticipated every Saturday morning. Watched the first episode yesterday, and the memories came flooding back, except for how crude bits and pits of the animation was, maybe it was because it was the first batch of episodes or something, but there's a lot of great material in here. Anyone else familiar with the cartoon series?
-Since I'm on the topic of comics I'll give a quick plug to a recent episode of On Tap that went up shortly after the last blog. It is part two of the comic book game retrospective, and is about the golden age of beat-em-ups on SNES and Genesis. Berzerker Barrage a download! Also check out the newest show that went up a few days back where we reminisce all about the N64
-I am now on a new work schedule, our supervisor wanted someone working on the weekend always so I volunteered myself so I can have Mondays and Tuesdays off. Why such odd days? Well, last week I caught all of RAW live in its entirety for the first time in months. Dave swung by and afterwards I took advantage of a Buc's offer of a free bucket of alcohol every Monday of your birthday month. Tuesday was awesome too as I met up with Dave again and Adam, we endured the finale of Sci Fi's Ultimate Gamer show (not all that bad surprisingly, and oddly entertaining) and hit up the downtown bar scene for a few hours. One of the pubs had a paper-rock-scissors special going on where if you beat the bartender in that game you score a free drink. Dave managed to score us three free shots!
-For what I have been playing lately, there has been a ton Fallout 3! I finally hit the 200 achievement point mark in that game after picking off some old saves to knock out the Galaxy News Radio quest that I accidentally disabled by accidentally discovering Rivet City on a side quest in my main save. I love that game!!!! Finally scored a slew of achievements in Flatout Ultimate Carnage, specifically after probably over 100 online races I received the "Win 10 Online Races" achievement....mad skills indeed. Same with Bankshot Billiards 2, I only unlocked one achievement for that game back in 2006, but winning five straight games of 9ball off the broke unlocked three more! Not that far into Resident Evil 5, about a good two hours or so where I incinerated that one boss at the end of 1-2, but this is easily the most fun I have had in an RE game yet.
Also started playing Halo Wars with co-worker Sean a couple of times in co-op. I am surprised that they managed to make the main campaign playable over Xbox Live, and it works surprisingly well too! As for the game itself, easily the most fun I have had with an RTS on a console since Starcraft 64, I am bewildered at how Ensemble managed to make the game work so well on a controller. Also before we went barhopping, Adam, Dave and I rocked out some old school Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. They never played it and I had to show the two what they were missing out on since it was the same day the game got announced it was hitting XBLA and PSN this summer with online play!
-I did kind of stumble upon a gaming deal recently. Unfortunately, I had to return the Nomad I picked up because the power supply input had a loose connection that resulted in the system randomly resetting every 2-3 minutes. No biggie, I am positive I will wind up with one sometime down the line. So I had an extra $67 in my budget than I planned, also working for me was a $25 gift card from work for taking an online benefits survey, that is $92! So I decided to go to work and pick up a couple games that were on my "maybe" list for awhile. Halo Wars and Riddick: Dark Athena were my pick-ups, combined for $120, but after tax and my discount it came to $115. Do the math, and that yields only a $23 difference for me to pay for two brand new $60 titles! Halo Wars was totally worth it alone, have yet to play Riddick, but I enjoyed the several hours I invested on the Xbox version that I do not mind picking that beast up again. Speaking of gaming deals, Best Buy also recently had a $10 clearance game blowout where I picked up the mediocre FPS Turning Point (I rented it before, not that great but I am a history nut) and Fracture. Damn, that is quite a bit I added to my already crazy backlog. At least being done with class soon will help free up some much needed game time.
-Allright, I am finally done with another belated blog. I will try to keep to get to these on at least a bi-weekly routine. I recall before when I could not go longer than two or three days without a blog, my how times change.
-I finish up my classes a week from now. I have probably stated it before here, but I will say it again, damn have those four years flew by! I had one of my finals today, and the other two in a week, and as far I know I believe I will finish with all As. Nice that it is finally over, it will not be nice paying back all those student loans. Family is throwing me a graduation party, so I have been busy planning that out recently.
The final I had today was for my Voice class, and it consisted of going to a senior center and singing in front of about 30-40 people. Our teacher, Vanessa did a tremendous job prepping us up for it the last few weeks and explaining the proper way to do introductions, exits and all sorts of mic techniques. There was only one other person in my voice class (we started the semester with only four of us), so Vanessa brought a few of her students from her other choir class on another campus along so there was five of us singing. I sang two songs: "The Water is Wide" and "Any Dream Will Do." I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be considering other than drunken karaoke this was my first time doing an actual performance in front of a crowd. Considering I went into the class with essentially no legitimate singing training prior, I think I did all right, and Vanessa thinks I have come quite a ways since when I started too, so huzzah for progress! The other students all did bang up jobs too, and we met up for some shakes after the concert. That was probably the one of the most unique classes I took throughout college, and dare I say I quite a bit of fun throughout.
-Caught a bunch of flicks again since the last blog. Here are some rapid fire thoughts - Crank 2 is just as crazy awesome as the first. I hear both wild praise and hate for the Crank films, for the haters please just turn off your mind and accept the craziness for what it is! Netflick'd Solomon Brothers at the recommendation of Matt, I was a little reluctant on seeing it after the trailer as the main characters seemed way too hokey for my likes, but they somehow made it work, and it resulted in one of the off extraordinary comedies I have seen in a while. Choke on the other hand is a darker comedy, I read the book awhile back upon its release and ate it up like most of Chuck Palahnuick's works. Film was pretty good, not as good an adaption as Fight Club, but still a fun flick regardless. I hope Lullaby or Survivor receives the next silver screen treatment for Palahnuick. Lastly, I saw X-Men Origins, and yeah it continues the trend of crap that started with X3. Actually, it was not that bad, really good action and CG, but the film goes way off kilter from the comic at a lot of points and skips a lot of ground. I ponder if there will be a crazy three hour director's cut of the film, please let that be the case!
-After seeing the Wolverine movie it did get me craving some more X-Men goodness. I rented the new Wolverine game for 360, and while it is not the end-all be-all licensed game, it is leagues better than most crap out there. 'Tiz a fun hack 'n slasher like God of War/Conan. A few weeks back I beat X-Men 2: Clone Wars on Genesis making it game #7 beaten this year! Thank you invincibility code, but curse you evil jumping platform section! I'm way behind Matt though who recently told me his count is currently at 31. Comic related, I ordered the Messiah Complex trade paperback recently at Matt's recommendation who said it is one of the best X-Men stories yet. In a final bit of X-Men nostalgia, and hopefully people reading this noticed this too, they finally released the first batch of early to mid-90s X-Men cartoons on DVD. This was one of the cartoons I craved growing up and eagerly anticipated every Saturday morning. Watched the first episode yesterday, and the memories came flooding back, except for how crude bits and pits of the animation was, maybe it was because it was the first batch of episodes or something, but there's a lot of great material in here. Anyone else familiar with the cartoon series?
-Since I'm on the topic of comics I'll give a quick plug to a recent episode of On Tap that went up shortly after the last blog. It is part two of the comic book game retrospective, and is about the golden age of beat-em-ups on SNES and Genesis. Berzerker Barrage a download! Also check out the newest show that went up a few days back where we reminisce all about the N64
-I am now on a new work schedule, our supervisor wanted someone working on the weekend always so I volunteered myself so I can have Mondays and Tuesdays off. Why such odd days? Well, last week I caught all of RAW live in its entirety for the first time in months. Dave swung by and afterwards I took advantage of a Buc's offer of a free bucket of alcohol every Monday of your birthday month. Tuesday was awesome too as I met up with Dave again and Adam, we endured the finale of Sci Fi's Ultimate Gamer show (not all that bad surprisingly, and oddly entertaining) and hit up the downtown bar scene for a few hours. One of the pubs had a paper-rock-scissors special going on where if you beat the bartender in that game you score a free drink. Dave managed to score us three free shots!
-For what I have been playing lately, there has been a ton Fallout 3! I finally hit the 200 achievement point mark in that game after picking off some old saves to knock out the Galaxy News Radio quest that I accidentally disabled by accidentally discovering Rivet City on a side quest in my main save. I love that game!!!! Finally scored a slew of achievements in Flatout Ultimate Carnage, specifically after probably over 100 online races I received the "Win 10 Online Races" achievement....mad skills indeed. Same with Bankshot Billiards 2, I only unlocked one achievement for that game back in 2006, but winning five straight games of 9ball off the broke unlocked three more! Not that far into Resident Evil 5, about a good two hours or so where I incinerated that one boss at the end of 1-2, but this is easily the most fun I have had in an RE game yet.
Also started playing Halo Wars with co-worker Sean a couple of times in co-op. I am surprised that they managed to make the main campaign playable over Xbox Live, and it works surprisingly well too! As for the game itself, easily the most fun I have had with an RTS on a console since Starcraft 64, I am bewildered at how Ensemble managed to make the game work so well on a controller. Also before we went barhopping, Adam, Dave and I rocked out some old school Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. They never played it and I had to show the two what they were missing out on since it was the same day the game got announced it was hitting XBLA and PSN this summer with online play!
-I did kind of stumble upon a gaming deal recently. Unfortunately, I had to return the Nomad I picked up because the power supply input had a loose connection that resulted in the system randomly resetting every 2-3 minutes. No biggie, I am positive I will wind up with one sometime down the line. So I had an extra $67 in my budget than I planned, also working for me was a $25 gift card from work for taking an online benefits survey, that is $92! So I decided to go to work and pick up a couple games that were on my "maybe" list for awhile. Halo Wars and Riddick: Dark Athena were my pick-ups, combined for $120, but after tax and my discount it came to $115. Do the math, and that yields only a $23 difference for me to pay for two brand new $60 titles! Halo Wars was totally worth it alone, have yet to play Riddick, but I enjoyed the several hours I invested on the Xbox version that I do not mind picking that beast up again. Speaking of gaming deals, Best Buy also recently had a $10 clearance game blowout where I picked up the mediocre FPS Turning Point (I rented it before, not that great but I am a history nut) and Fracture. Damn, that is quite a bit I added to my already crazy backlog. At least being done with class soon will help free up some much needed game time.
-Allright, I am finally done with another belated blog. I will try to keep to get to these on at least a bi-weekly routine. I recall before when I could not go longer than two or three days without a blog, my how times change.
Comments:
Post a Comment
