Tuesday, January 12, 2010
-After another longer than usual absence, I am back with another extra-long update! Christmas break left a lot to be desired, as I spent all of Christmas snowed in at home because a Blizzard rocked our town all of Christmas day. Christmas Eve was at least somewhat eventful. Our family celebrated with my dad, and we had a fantastic meal and played a ton of Scene It on 360. I then continued my annual tradition of attending Midnight Mass with my dad. The roads were still fine, and weather was fair and calm when church got out a little after 1am. I recall the Blizzard Warning was not suppose to start until 6am, and still had a sliver of life left in me so Joey came over, and so did Dick (who was visiting from the Twin Cities) and we watched Extract on DVD (still awesome by the way!).
After the movie, we all bs'd for a little bit afterwards and around this time it was 4am. Thought it would be a good time to call it a night, and upon going outside was surprised to see in that three hour time span it went to absolute hell outside. I somehow managed not to get stuck, and barely was able to give Dick a ride home. When I did wake up Christmas morning, all the highways were closed(canceling our family's plan to travel to my sister's in Montevideo for Christmas). They were not even advising travel across town because the plows were unable to keep the roads plowed with their limited holiday staff. So I spent all Christmas at home, calling family and friends wishing them a Merry Christmas. Dick did make it back over that night, when the roads were slightly plowed because he was determined to record another Christmas edition of The Cheap Pop like last year, and we pulled it off, all the while I was fighting off passing out in the middle of recording due to the crazy day. right click and download here to listen to the 2009 Cheap Pop Christmas Special!
-Did not get a whole lot for Christmas this year, our family has been trying to cut back in this terrible economy this year. Did get a few goodies though, namely a Sega Nomad from Joey! The one I picked up in town shortly after MGC had a nasty short in it and I had to return it. So it is very gratifying that I now have one of those in my collection. Also got a copy of Axis & Allies board game which I have been dying for over the years, now I just got to set aside the 20-some hours it takes to complete a session. Also received a cool Sub-Zero wall scroll from Joe. My Dad got me a UND jacket and hat. Finally, this year's random $5 DVD from Mom was Alpha Dog, which according to my sister is a really good flick. I got my mom Big Fish for my $5 DVD pick for her.
-Speaking of Big Fish, it was among the several flicks I have seen since my last update, so here are some rapid fire thoughts. Big Fish was a superb, silly, tearjerker. Sherlock Holmes was awesome, but they could have eased off on the crows. The Dead Space anime will go down as the only anime movie I could somewhat comprehend what was going on and legitimately enjoyed. The Marine 2 is better than the first, though that is not saying much. Or as Cody Rhodes put it on RAW, "My fifth grade graduation video is superior to the original Marine." Ted Dibiase did not do all that bad considering his lack of background. I am a couple more discs through season 3 of Entourage and season 1 of Veronica Mars, and am still digging both shows. There are a couple spots on both shows I that could have been done better, like how Troy was written off Veronica Mars, and the whole lost friend who just got of jail and ruined two episodes of Entourage.
-As I write this I am watching the Tonight Show with Conan 'O Brian! By the time I get around to my next blog, who knows if that show will be around anymore. So how about all that honkey-dorey with the proposed switch up in NBC late night scheduling, and Conan threatening to leave NBC late night if he does not get to keep his timeslot? I wish NBC could have had a little more patience with Conan and gave him a little more time to develop an audience than 7 months, given NBC gave themselves 5 years to plan out this move when they announced that Conan would get the timeslot. At least give the guy a full year. I have not had a chance to watch too much Conan the past few years since I work late night, but I do catch an episode from time to time, and watch an occasional clip online.
For about a two year time frame, our breaks happened to coincide where we got to watch Conan on both breaks and I got a great fill of Conan each and every week back on his Late Night days. One of my all time favorite Conan sketches to this day is when him and Andy traveled to a random suburb of New York that they threw a dart at on a board and they landed in a small rural town that all they had to offer was fresh dairy milk and a pool. Apparently NBC said they will have the Late Night issue resolved a month from now, and I hope that Conan keeps the slot he worked so hard for.
-Anyone remember the old GameSpot Live game show, Button Mashing? Ran from around 2005 to 2007, and was featured a lot of the beloved GameSpot staff before the mass exodus that resulted from the GertsmannGate scandal. Was a greater time at GameSpot, when I did not mind subscribing to GameSpot plus for $25/year for several years. For whatever reason I got the itch to watch a good chunk of the episodes, downloaded and burned them all on DVD for collection's sake, and they still hold up! Reminds me they need to bring that concept back to television. I recall digging old favorite shows growing up like Nick Arcade and Video Power I watched on a daily basis. Anyone remember those? The game contest show format enjoyed a brief resurrection when it was slightly brought back with Button Mashing, and if you want to check it out when GameSpot had some of the best gaming journalist personalities, click here to check out Gamespot's Button Mashing archive page.
-In wrestling happenings, I finally watched the first disc of the Royal Rumble Anthology 20 disc set that collects every Rumble from 1988-2007. Matt and I conjured this improbable idea where Matt owns the Summerslam 20 Disc Anthology, and if we were to rotate watching one disc a week (and take an occasional week off here and there to prevent burnout), that we would be able to finish both sets by the end of the year. Both sets have been setting on our shelves, practically unwatched since we purchased them, and this was the only way we could think of to make some progress. I am incredibly behind on my wrestling DVDs still, but I did manage to finally finish all of the extra matches on the Rise and Fall of WCW Set, and start disc two of the Saturday Night's Main Event collection.
Did anyone catch the one night return of the Monday Night Wars? TNA was able to get Spike to broadcast Impact live head to head against RAW. TNA has been wanting this for awhile, and rumor has it that Spike will allow TNA to do this once every quarter, and if they are satisfied with the ratings, then it looks like we will have a full time return of the Monday Night Wars. TNA pulled out all the punches with that show, bringing on not only Hulk Hogan for his first in ring TNA appearance, but also the TNA debut/returns of Jeff Hardy(!), Ric Flair(!!!), X-Pac, Scott Hall, Val Venis and Orlando Jordan. I was very shocked seeing Ric Flair on TNA and Jeff Hardy as I was under the impression both did not want to burn their bridge with WWE.
Was a very newsworthy Impact, but I did not catch quite all of it because like in the old Monday Night Wars fashion, I only tuned into the first hour of Impact, and then the following two hours of RAW which was a cannot miss to see the first in ring appearance of Bret Hart in a WWE ring in 12 years. Surreal is the word that comes to mind to see Bret in a ring and making up with Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon. However much of it was a work is beyond me, but you cannot deny that there something real there with Bret wanting some closure with what Vince pulled on him at Survivor Series 1997. So if you were a wrestling geek like me, then this was probably one of the biggest moments in wrestling for you quite some time.
-Last weekend I drove down to Fargo with Adam and Dave to meet up with Matt, Danielle and Corey to catch a WWE House Show. This marked the 7th WWE show I have attended, and 11th wrestling card overall. Before the show Dave, Adam and I hit up Famous Dave's for some righteous BBQ eats. Only about 2/3 of the Fargodome was being used for the event. It had a pretty good turnout, with roughly 7-8,000 fans in attendance. Crowd was pretty into the card, with the sole exception being for the Knox/Escobar match which the arena went silent for. Biggest pop of the night went to Goldust strangely enough and many, many kiddies cheering their hearts away for Rey Mysterio. We had the privilege to sit next to an African woman who we could only make out 10% of what she was saying whenever she decided to shout out a jeer towards a wrestler. Crowd really hated William Regal and Chris Jericho who went with the "Fargo is cold and in the middle of nowhere" material for cheap heat. Last thing worth noting is that Batista took a swing at a fan who spat on him, and the fan was promptly escorted out of the building. I think Fargo forgot Batista was a bad guy now, as the crowd was almost in full support of him. Here are the results:
R-Truth pinned Dolph Ziggler via roll-up
Golddust/Yoshi Tatsu/Vladimir Koslov defeated William Regal/Zach Ryder/Tyler Reks
Eric Escobar pinned Mike Knox via roll-up
Mickie James pinned Beth Phoenix via DDT
Chris Jericho pinned Matt Hardy via Codebreaker
Hart Dynasty defeated Jimmy Wayne Yang & Slam Master J
Drew McIntyre pinned John Morrison via Underhook DDT
Christian pinned Ezekiel Jackson via Unprettier
Rey Mysterio defeated Batista by DQ via Batista hitting Rey with ring bell
-When talking to Shawn over the holidays, he had the idea to use the 360's video chat capabilities to see our families talk to each other in person. Finally got around to hooking that up a few days ago. Have not seen Jane & Shawn, and their kids Adrian & Kadeance since October 2008, so it was good to see them in the flesh for the first time in over a year. We had a nice chat for over an hour catching up. We opted to use our cell phone's speaker phone functionality instead of passing around the 360 headset to talk, and it worked quite nicely. So if you ever need another way to catch up and put a couple of families in contact with each other again, give the 360 Camera and/or PS3 Eye method a shot.
-The latest episode of On Tap that went up was one of my yearly favorites, our Game of the Year special where all of us countdown all our top 10 games of the year. Besides doing that, we went out of our way and included several other bonus awards this year we handed out such as Best & Worst Voice Acting, Best & Worst Replay Value, Best Trophy/Achievement and Best non-2009 game of 2009. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun with it, with some interesting picks for some of these awards. Want a teaser for one of them? Well, one host gave Forza 3 their pick for Worst Voice Acting. How can that possibly be? Right click and download here to find out.
-We are not even half a month into the new year and I have already beaten my first two games of 2010. Game #1 goes to inFamous on PS3, while game #2 goes to Kirby Super Star on the SNES. inFamous was a blast, and it almost made it on my 2009 beaten list because I did not realize how little I had left going into 2010. Another great new IP from Sony that they can only build off of in their proposed 10 year lifecycle for the PS3. Someone brought up on the On Tap forums that we should play and review Kirby Super Star, and Joey's friend Jake saw the post and borrowed me the game to play. It is not that long of a game, and I beat it in two sittings. It is my first Kirby game I have ever played, and I regret missing out on all other entries in the series now. Odd to have play such a user-friendly game in the 16-bit era with infinite continues and very frequent checkpoints that seem more of a standard in games of today instead of 14 years ago.
-Here is the rest of what I have been playing, I will attempt to do this in rapid fire fashion as in past blogs.
-Scott owned me twice in Madden NFL 2010. Also started a Superstar Mode in Madden as a Tight End with the Cardinals. Also continued our World Tour in Rock Band 2 with Scott. Started LEGO Rock Band's World Tour mode with Matt & Danielle. Had a surprisingly good time with it, and it was not quite the quick Rock Band license cash in as I thought it would be. Could use some more songs though because I ran into a lot of repetition.
Got a chance to play Left 4 Dead 2 w/Mike, Tim, Ryan last weekend. Played through two "movies." More of the same spastic/twitch gameplay that made the original famous, was starting to get frustrated with it until we put our pride to the side and switched it down to Easy difficulty. On the DS I have been rocking out a round or two of Family Feud 2010 before passing out almost every day because I fiend that game show. On the road to Fargo and back I made a lot of progress and finally got past a puzzle I was stuck on in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.
Got back into Assassin's Creed again for the first time in awhile. I think I have assassinated four of the nine targets so far. From what people tell me the gripes I have with it so far are all addressed in the sequel. Played some FlatOut Ultimate Carnage with Joey online last night, and made a little progress in the other offline cups. Threw in Mortal Kombat vs. DC and finally finished the MK story, now time to move onto the DC side before I can add it to the list. For the record, the story in that game is officially bonkers, but I love it!
After beating Kirby Super Star, I got the kick to throw in a couple of other classics on the SNES. Wizardry V I threw in for the first time and was looking forward to it after all the time I have put into Wizardry 8. However, I was not counting on being utterly confused by the old school Wizardry menus, and I completely forgot about the static dungeon maze animation. You literally needed graph paper to not get lost. Also threw in Shadowrun, which is one of my all time favorites. Cannot believe how much I remembered off the top of my head. I started a new game, and was getting reacquainted with the controls and it all just started clicking for me, though a few minutes too late as I perished trying to remember where my apartment was where to save.
-OK that wraps up another, long-winded blog! Until next time, peace!
After the movie, we all bs'd for a little bit afterwards and around this time it was 4am. Thought it would be a good time to call it a night, and upon going outside was surprised to see in that three hour time span it went to absolute hell outside. I somehow managed not to get stuck, and barely was able to give Dick a ride home. When I did wake up Christmas morning, all the highways were closed(canceling our family's plan to travel to my sister's in Montevideo for Christmas). They were not even advising travel across town because the plows were unable to keep the roads plowed with their limited holiday staff. So I spent all Christmas at home, calling family and friends wishing them a Merry Christmas. Dick did make it back over that night, when the roads were slightly plowed because he was determined to record another Christmas edition of The Cheap Pop like last year, and we pulled it off, all the while I was fighting off passing out in the middle of recording due to the crazy day. right click and download here to listen to the 2009 Cheap Pop Christmas Special!
-Did not get a whole lot for Christmas this year, our family has been trying to cut back in this terrible economy this year. Did get a few goodies though, namely a Sega Nomad from Joey! The one I picked up in town shortly after MGC had a nasty short in it and I had to return it. So it is very gratifying that I now have one of those in my collection. Also got a copy of Axis & Allies board game which I have been dying for over the years, now I just got to set aside the 20-some hours it takes to complete a session. Also received a cool Sub-Zero wall scroll from Joe. My Dad got me a UND jacket and hat. Finally, this year's random $5 DVD from Mom was Alpha Dog, which according to my sister is a really good flick. I got my mom Big Fish for my $5 DVD pick for her.
-Speaking of Big Fish, it was among the several flicks I have seen since my last update, so here are some rapid fire thoughts. Big Fish was a superb, silly, tearjerker. Sherlock Holmes was awesome, but they could have eased off on the crows. The Dead Space anime will go down as the only anime movie I could somewhat comprehend what was going on and legitimately enjoyed. The Marine 2 is better than the first, though that is not saying much. Or as Cody Rhodes put it on RAW, "My fifth grade graduation video is superior to the original Marine." Ted Dibiase did not do all that bad considering his lack of background. I am a couple more discs through season 3 of Entourage and season 1 of Veronica Mars, and am still digging both shows. There are a couple spots on both shows I that could have been done better, like how Troy was written off Veronica Mars, and the whole lost friend who just got of jail and ruined two episodes of Entourage.
-As I write this I am watching the Tonight Show with Conan 'O Brian! By the time I get around to my next blog, who knows if that show will be around anymore. So how about all that honkey-dorey with the proposed switch up in NBC late night scheduling, and Conan threatening to leave NBC late night if he does not get to keep his timeslot? I wish NBC could have had a little more patience with Conan and gave him a little more time to develop an audience than 7 months, given NBC gave themselves 5 years to plan out this move when they announced that Conan would get the timeslot. At least give the guy a full year. I have not had a chance to watch too much Conan the past few years since I work late night, but I do catch an episode from time to time, and watch an occasional clip online.
For about a two year time frame, our breaks happened to coincide where we got to watch Conan on both breaks and I got a great fill of Conan each and every week back on his Late Night days. One of my all time favorite Conan sketches to this day is when him and Andy traveled to a random suburb of New York that they threw a dart at on a board and they landed in a small rural town that all they had to offer was fresh dairy milk and a pool. Apparently NBC said they will have the Late Night issue resolved a month from now, and I hope that Conan keeps the slot he worked so hard for.
-Anyone remember the old GameSpot Live game show, Button Mashing? Ran from around 2005 to 2007, and was featured a lot of the beloved GameSpot staff before the mass exodus that resulted from the GertsmannGate scandal. Was a greater time at GameSpot, when I did not mind subscribing to GameSpot plus for $25/year for several years. For whatever reason I got the itch to watch a good chunk of the episodes, downloaded and burned them all on DVD for collection's sake, and they still hold up! Reminds me they need to bring that concept back to television. I recall digging old favorite shows growing up like Nick Arcade and Video Power I watched on a daily basis. Anyone remember those? The game contest show format enjoyed a brief resurrection when it was slightly brought back with Button Mashing, and if you want to check it out when GameSpot had some of the best gaming journalist personalities, click here to check out Gamespot's Button Mashing archive page.
-In wrestling happenings, I finally watched the first disc of the Royal Rumble Anthology 20 disc set that collects every Rumble from 1988-2007. Matt and I conjured this improbable idea where Matt owns the Summerslam 20 Disc Anthology, and if we were to rotate watching one disc a week (and take an occasional week off here and there to prevent burnout), that we would be able to finish both sets by the end of the year. Both sets have been setting on our shelves, practically unwatched since we purchased them, and this was the only way we could think of to make some progress. I am incredibly behind on my wrestling DVDs still, but I did manage to finally finish all of the extra matches on the Rise and Fall of WCW Set, and start disc two of the Saturday Night's Main Event collection.
Did anyone catch the one night return of the Monday Night Wars? TNA was able to get Spike to broadcast Impact live head to head against RAW. TNA has been wanting this for awhile, and rumor has it that Spike will allow TNA to do this once every quarter, and if they are satisfied with the ratings, then it looks like we will have a full time return of the Monday Night Wars. TNA pulled out all the punches with that show, bringing on not only Hulk Hogan for his first in ring TNA appearance, but also the TNA debut/returns of Jeff Hardy(!), Ric Flair(!!!), X-Pac, Scott Hall, Val Venis and Orlando Jordan. I was very shocked seeing Ric Flair on TNA and Jeff Hardy as I was under the impression both did not want to burn their bridge with WWE.
Was a very newsworthy Impact, but I did not catch quite all of it because like in the old Monday Night Wars fashion, I only tuned into the first hour of Impact, and then the following two hours of RAW which was a cannot miss to see the first in ring appearance of Bret Hart in a WWE ring in 12 years. Surreal is the word that comes to mind to see Bret in a ring and making up with Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon. However much of it was a work is beyond me, but you cannot deny that there something real there with Bret wanting some closure with what Vince pulled on him at Survivor Series 1997. So if you were a wrestling geek like me, then this was probably one of the biggest moments in wrestling for you quite some time.
-Last weekend I drove down to Fargo with Adam and Dave to meet up with Matt, Danielle and Corey to catch a WWE House Show. This marked the 7th WWE show I have attended, and 11th wrestling card overall. Before the show Dave, Adam and I hit up Famous Dave's for some righteous BBQ eats. Only about 2/3 of the Fargodome was being used for the event. It had a pretty good turnout, with roughly 7-8,000 fans in attendance. Crowd was pretty into the card, with the sole exception being for the Knox/Escobar match which the arena went silent for. Biggest pop of the night went to Goldust strangely enough and many, many kiddies cheering their hearts away for Rey Mysterio. We had the privilege to sit next to an African woman who we could only make out 10% of what she was saying whenever she decided to shout out a jeer towards a wrestler. Crowd really hated William Regal and Chris Jericho who went with the "Fargo is cold and in the middle of nowhere" material for cheap heat. Last thing worth noting is that Batista took a swing at a fan who spat on him, and the fan was promptly escorted out of the building. I think Fargo forgot Batista was a bad guy now, as the crowd was almost in full support of him. Here are the results:
R-Truth pinned Dolph Ziggler via roll-up
Golddust/Yoshi Tatsu/Vladimir Koslov defeated William Regal/Zach Ryder/Tyler Reks
Eric Escobar pinned Mike Knox via roll-up
Mickie James pinned Beth Phoenix via DDT
Chris Jericho pinned Matt Hardy via Codebreaker
Hart Dynasty defeated Jimmy Wayne Yang & Slam Master J
Drew McIntyre pinned John Morrison via Underhook DDT
Christian pinned Ezekiel Jackson via Unprettier
Rey Mysterio defeated Batista by DQ via Batista hitting Rey with ring bell
-When talking to Shawn over the holidays, he had the idea to use the 360's video chat capabilities to see our families talk to each other in person. Finally got around to hooking that up a few days ago. Have not seen Jane & Shawn, and their kids Adrian & Kadeance since October 2008, so it was good to see them in the flesh for the first time in over a year. We had a nice chat for over an hour catching up. We opted to use our cell phone's speaker phone functionality instead of passing around the 360 headset to talk, and it worked quite nicely. So if you ever need another way to catch up and put a couple of families in contact with each other again, give the 360 Camera and/or PS3 Eye method a shot.
-The latest episode of On Tap that went up was one of my yearly favorites, our Game of the Year special where all of us countdown all our top 10 games of the year. Besides doing that, we went out of our way and included several other bonus awards this year we handed out such as Best & Worst Voice Acting, Best & Worst Replay Value, Best Trophy/Achievement and Best non-2009 game of 2009. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun with it, with some interesting picks for some of these awards. Want a teaser for one of them? Well, one host gave Forza 3 their pick for Worst Voice Acting. How can that possibly be? Right click and download here to find out.
-We are not even half a month into the new year and I have already beaten my first two games of 2010. Game #1 goes to inFamous on PS3, while game #2 goes to Kirby Super Star on the SNES. inFamous was a blast, and it almost made it on my 2009 beaten list because I did not realize how little I had left going into 2010. Another great new IP from Sony that they can only build off of in their proposed 10 year lifecycle for the PS3. Someone brought up on the On Tap forums that we should play and review Kirby Super Star, and Joey's friend Jake saw the post and borrowed me the game to play. It is not that long of a game, and I beat it in two sittings. It is my first Kirby game I have ever played, and I regret missing out on all other entries in the series now. Odd to have play such a user-friendly game in the 16-bit era with infinite continues and very frequent checkpoints that seem more of a standard in games of today instead of 14 years ago.
-Here is the rest of what I have been playing, I will attempt to do this in rapid fire fashion as in past blogs.
-Scott owned me twice in Madden NFL 2010. Also started a Superstar Mode in Madden as a Tight End with the Cardinals. Also continued our World Tour in Rock Band 2 with Scott. Started LEGO Rock Band's World Tour mode with Matt & Danielle. Had a surprisingly good time with it, and it was not quite the quick Rock Band license cash in as I thought it would be. Could use some more songs though because I ran into a lot of repetition.
Got a chance to play Left 4 Dead 2 w/Mike, Tim, Ryan last weekend. Played through two "movies." More of the same spastic/twitch gameplay that made the original famous, was starting to get frustrated with it until we put our pride to the side and switched it down to Easy difficulty. On the DS I have been rocking out a round or two of Family Feud 2010 before passing out almost every day because I fiend that game show. On the road to Fargo and back I made a lot of progress and finally got past a puzzle I was stuck on in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.
Got back into Assassin's Creed again for the first time in awhile. I think I have assassinated four of the nine targets so far. From what people tell me the gripes I have with it so far are all addressed in the sequel. Played some FlatOut Ultimate Carnage with Joey online last night, and made a little progress in the other offline cups. Threw in Mortal Kombat vs. DC and finally finished the MK story, now time to move onto the DC side before I can add it to the list. For the record, the story in that game is officially bonkers, but I love it!
After beating Kirby Super Star, I got the kick to throw in a couple of other classics on the SNES. Wizardry V I threw in for the first time and was looking forward to it after all the time I have put into Wizardry 8. However, I was not counting on being utterly confused by the old school Wizardry menus, and I completely forgot about the static dungeon maze animation. You literally needed graph paper to not get lost. Also threw in Shadowrun, which is one of my all time favorites. Cannot believe how much I remembered off the top of my head. I started a new game, and was getting reacquainted with the controls and it all just started clicking for me, though a few minutes too late as I perished trying to remember where my apartment was where to save.
-OK that wraps up another, long-winded blog! Until next time, peace!
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