Miffy's Alcove

Ughhh....

2007-02-22T09:18:53Z

Ok, I am soooooo fucking drunk right now, but I want to remember this later, so I'll post right now.

Grant's telling me now that we're cleaning his room tomorrow, to which I respond "Fuck you cocksucker." He still has pizza in his nose from his earlier puking. I'm drunker right now than I've been since I was 16 years old, which I think makes this trip a success. The entire room smells of puke. There's only one of us who made it through the night without vomiting. I'm not ashamed to admit it wasn't me. Alcool will fucking kill you. If you go on Facebook and find Grant Dingwall, you can see an album of tonight. There's one photo of me about three seconds before I threw up. I'm weeping from trying to hold it back. God it hurts. Good night though. We're drinking more tomorrow. Grant's telling me there won't be many photos as bars will frown upon cameras coming out once the nakedness starts.

Still haven't ground Parliment SBeth, that'll happen tomorrow. I hope a photo of me puking helps in case I don't get one. I'm going to type the names of the people I've been drinking with tonight in case I forget them. Matt, Phil, Grant, Allie, Lacey. Those people fucking rock. Also, Phil can really fucking snore. I don't know how I've supposed to sleep with that going on, as Grant, Matt, Phil, and I are all trying to share a one person dorm room for the night. I feel worst for Matt, as he has a job interview in the morning. Whoops. Hope he's sobered up by then. Hell, hope I have too. I'm going to try to sleep now. I don't have many clothes left. I hope these guys are cool with that. It's not like it'll matter before the morning. Anyway, bed now. Now is the time for sleep. Night all. Happy reading week. I have so much fucking homework to do when I get home. Hope I'm ok for it. Good night world. I'll see you all later. Some of you in my more out there dreams. Later.

- Peter

Yaaaaaay! Vay-Cay-Shun!

2007-02-18T19:47:31Z

Hurray! Here I am in Ottawa. Yesterday was my first day off since January 2nd (so yeah, I empathize with how you were feeling in your last post, Rebekah) and also my first full day in Ottawa sleeping on the floor of my friend's dorm room at Carleton University. Its not all that bad. I've got an air mattress, and his girlfriend brought me a pillow and blanket from her Grandparents' house, so I'm set. Yesterday we hit up Winterlude (w00t! Ice sculptures!) and then went to the bars down in Market. For those who don't know, Maket is the big bar district. I love how much is in French down here. Anyway, I fucking hate typing on laptop keyboards, so I'm going to cut this short. The night kicked ass, and a full post on all that happened down here will be written when I get back. One of my buddy's friends described me as "That dude who looks like Seth from the O.C." I've never seen the O.C. Can someone who has tell me if this is good or not? Anyway, shit planned for today so I'm gone for now. No, SBeth, don't have pics of me on Parliment yet, but have some others you'd be interested in. Later.

'Nother Weekend (crack)Down...

2007-02-11T10:14:11Z

Thank God for Friday nights. If I only get one night a week to relax, I may as well make the most of it. This Friday consisted of a 6 pub crawl with B and N from last week, as well as B's bandmates S and E. We also stopped by the theater as we walked by to see if anyone wanted to tag along. Managed to pick up L, as she's pretty new and wanted to try socializing with other staff members. Was a fun time. Only awkward part of the evening was when N and I tagged along with B when he went for a smoke and the two of them gave me some speech that was apparently supposed to inspire confidence that I just don't seem to have. Whatever. All in all, a good night.

Anyway, I promised a post about the usual kind of shit, so here we go. I haven't had time to play much lately, in all honesty. The Wii is getting used for Virtual Console games now and then (Contra 3! w00t! "It's time for revenge." "Let's attack aggressively!") and the 360 for Lumines when I feel like letting my brain melt on techno-infused trip-out Tetris but mostly it's all been about Guitar Hero. I'm getting pumped for the (preordered) 360 version with downloadable new songs and honing my skills as I go. Still can't fucking beat Jordan though. Damn Buckethead.

Aside from that, the only recent thing is that the demo for Crackdown hit about a week ago on 360. I downloaded it out of curiosity and gave it a spin. Y'know what? Damned fun. I'd consider picking it up right away if it didn't come bundled with the Halo 3 Beta invite. I've never really given a shit about the Halo games. They're good and all, but aren't really anything than well made generic shooters. I'll probably get Halo 3 eventually, but would need to feel compelled to get Halo 2 first. As the "first chance to get a look at Halo 3!" part of Crackdown doesn't really appeal to me, I'll wait a month or so rather than compete with all the neanderthal-esque fratboys grabbing their copy and immediately throwing it aside in order to get their Halo on. Still, if you have any interest in over the top craziness, check out the demo. It's a 1.25 GB download, but worth the time.

Imagine GTA. I'd really rather not make this comparison, in all honesty, but the game was created by the same guy who made the original top-down GTA back in the day so I might as well. Anyway, GTA is not particularly realistic. It's gritty. It's violent. As mature games go, it may be the most mature game that's seen success among immature gamers. There's a lot of "Hey, this game lets me blow shit up and fuck whores!" people out there, but the game is actually really well written and entralling if you let yourself buy into the universe. It's notoriety in the mainstream is based on horrible things that you can do because the game gives you freedom, it's notoriety among many serious gamers is based on the fact that it's a very well done narrative that simultaneously grants the player incredible amounts of freedom. Despite this though, realism is not very high on the list. As games go, I'm willing to say it's more realistic than the average game, but that's really not saying a whole lot. Still, take that play style and remove any pretense of realism. Now you have Crackdown.

Freedom. Total fucking freedom. You are John Q. Supercop (Name made up and now trademarked. Contact me if you want it, Realtime Worlds) and you have full run of this fictional city. You can actually leap tall buildings in a single bound. Throw busses (still full of people!) at gangsters to splat them. Pile up a big mound of cars and toss a grenade at the bottom, sending them flying several hundred feet in the air. Shoot the living crap out of anything and everything. I'm not sure if this game is supposed to be endorsing wanton police brutality and callousness or satirizing it, but fuck me if the game ain't fun. As I played through the 45-ish minute demo, brutally destroying drug cartel gang member after drug cartel gang member, It occurred to me just how stupid the game's mechanics were. Respawning gangsters? When I died, it said I had a back-up clone waiting to replace me at a spawn point. The hell? Still, I was having too much fun to give this more than a passing thought. This is a fucking good sign. When a game can be as ridiculous as all hell and you're enjoying yourself too much to let it bother you, you have a pretty sure winner on your hands.

The art in Crackdown also bears mention. Again, realism isn't something it's shooting for. In fact, the game is cel-shaded. That's right, cartoon style. Like Zelda on the Gamecube. Still, it pulls it off in a really striking way. It's done much like one of the late 80s onward comic books. Realistic but stylish. Looks like it could be from a photo, but still enough of a cartoon for the artist to give it some personal flair. I dig this shit. The game looks great. Feels like I'm playing through an issue of The Watchmen or The Walking Dead. Art, but real. Real, but art. Whatever. It's good. Also worth saying, the explosions are pretty as all hell.

So those are my impressions of Crackdown. Demo's out now, full game is available on the 20th. Despite how impressed I am with the whole thing right now, I'm going to wait a bit before picking it up. Until this whole "Halo" business blows over, anyway. This'll give me a chance to check out some proper reviews too, so I'll have a bit more of an informed opinion. If you have a 360 though, download the demo. Worth your time and a very entertaining way to blow a chunk of time.

As a last note, over the last few weeks I've had a chance to see both Pan's Labyrinth and The Last King of Scotland. I think I prefer Pan, but they're close. Check out both if you can find 'em in your city. Night all.

Minor situational update

2007-02-07T11:27:00Z

Wheee. So tonight I felt like catching a movie and went into the theater. Had a good time and all, but the first thing that greeted me was the guy at the popcorn machine saying "So, what's this I hear about you and M in the back room?"

*sigh* The next few shifts are going to be interesting to say the least. 'Nother midterm on the morrow. Wish me luck!

For the benefit of friends who've moved away...

2007-02-04T11:40:20Z

I don't really open up a whole lot. Right now, I'm a bit drunk and really frustrated, so I'm going to do that. This is mostly for those friends of mine who've moved away and don't have any other real form of contact with me. For those that read this and have only ever known me online, this is your warning. I'm 19 years old. Right now, I'm going to take a brief departure and act it. Full of angst, conflict, and more hi-balls than I bothered to count. You've been warned. Now then, without further ado...

[ANGST]
God fucking dammit.
Why would they think I'm fucking her? I know I'm not an unattractive guy, but she's about 5 or 6 leagues removed from the one I'm in. Like a fucking greek goddess. Allow me to back up a bit.

I'm going to only use initials here, as fuck knows who's reading this. I work with a girl, M. M is goddamned gorgeous. I'm an atheist and M still makes me want to drop to my knees and thank God. No one doesn't like each other where I work, so M and I get along well. We talk quite a bit. She also happens to be next in line for a manager promotion. As I was the last one to go through this, she follows me around while I'm working and I show her what she'll be doing in a couple of month's time. Today I was working in the back office, fucking around with the cash as is my job, and she comes in. As is to be expected, we get to talking. 45 minutes later, we realize it's been a while and go back out to the lobby. There's also some stuff that needs to be done in the projection booth and as she's learning that too, she watches me work and we talk while I'm at it. How to tell an aspect ratio from the look of the film, which lenses and aperture plates go with what, that sort of thing. We happen to have a special screening of a silent movie on Monday, so I had the rare opportunity to work with a silent film, and she got to see it up close. Cool stuff. Well, this takes time. Another 45 minutes later and we're done. We go back out into the lobby and the rest of the staff start snickering at us. Whatever. It's what we do, we all tease and flirt with each other constantly so I shrug it off.

Well, the shift comes to an end and B, N, C, and I all decide to go out for a couple of beers. We head to the pub down the street, Murph's, and chill for a while. This is when it starts.

B: "So dude, c'mon. Straight up. What were you two doing in there for so long?"
Me: "The hell? We were talking, man."
N: "Come off it. I (an initial, not N) went up and knocked on the door and you didn't even acknowledge it."
Me: "Really? Didn't hear a thing. Honestly, we were only talking."
B: "C'mon. Don't fucking lie to me, man. I understand that you're worried about it, 'cause yeah she's a minor, but she'll be 18 in a couple months. You're barely a year and a half older than her. Just tell us."
Me: "Swear to god man, NOTHING HAPPENED."

This goes on for a while. Finally, I manage to convince them. But that's three guys. Apparently the whole damned theater thinks we're fucking. What the hell?

Y'know what kills me? Since we started working together more, I've really started crushing on her. I would like nothing more than for those goddamned fucking rumours to be true. She was always beautiful, but the more I find out about her, the more attractive she becomes. And tonight there was an opening. I won't go into the details, but she left this opening in the conversation intentionally. She expected, wanted, me to say something specific. I knew what it was. What did I do? Same fucking thing I always do. Act all awkward and clueless. Try to play it off as cute. Fucking spineless, ballless sack of shit that I am, I just try to pretend I have no clue. Maybe I really don't.

I may not look it, but I'm still trapped in Junior high. I hear that a lot of people are. No matter how much you change, inside you're always really going to be that person that you were in the 7th or 8th grade. I kinda got fucked in that respect. In the 7th grade, I was 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide. I could barely speak to a member of the opposite sex without wanting to vomit, even if I had no attraction to them whatsoever. The ones I liked, fuck. I would vomit. I'm a lot better than that now. Most of my closest friends are female. Still, when it gets down to important things, I'm still that same fat little fucker I was when I was 11.

After the bar, B, N and I walked home together. I love both of them like brothers. They're fantastic guys and I wouldn't give up their friendship for anything. Of course, they want to try to help me out. Now that they know that I'm not fucking M, they want to work it out so that I am. I promised that I wouldn't reveal the bulk of the details of that conversation to anyone else, so I won't go into them here. A drunken vow is still a vow. All I'll say about this walk was that there were points where, no matter how much I love the guy, I could have wrung N's neck.

A big part of the problem is that they think I want the same things they do. They're quality guys, don't get me wrong, but at the moment, all they're looking for is a quick fuck. I really want a relationship.

SIDE STORY: ONE OF THE MOST PATHETIC NIGHTS OF MY LIFE
A few nights ago I couldn't sleep. I went over to my bookshelf and let my fingers skim across the book spines. They eventually settled on an old volume of Shakespeare's writing that my father gave to me a few months before he died. It was his when he was a teenager in the 40s, and he wanted me to have it too. It's a very old book, and holds a hell of a lot of sentimental value to me. Anyway, I didn't want to read anything too involving. It was already four in the morning and I wanted to get to sleep. I decided I'd just read some sonnets. Light reading as I'm going to sleep, y'know? I didn't even get two pages in before I was in tears. I don't cry often, but this really set me off. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my head in some girl's lap and be reading them to each other. I couldn't take just reading them in bed with a cat sitting on me. I went to sleep soonafter, but it wasn't a very good sleep at all.

So yeah, not out for a quick fuck. Now I'm not fooling myself. I know that at 19, especially with the bar scene in this city, finding that isn't very likely. I don't need exactly that, but I do need something involved. The way that they were trying to help me almost made me sick. Essentially it boils down to "Just lie to women, dude! It's so easy!" Sorry guys, I love you and all, but that doesn't help. Honestly, the way they were talking about M pissed me off a bit too. Especially since I've been getting to know her, she deserves more fucking respect than that.

I walked the rest of the way home by myself. I'm really frustrated with myself right now. I know I had an opportunity to get somewhere with her, and I did the same fucking thing I always do. I swore at the sky a couple of times, top of my lungs, on the walk home. I only felt good for a second or two, but it was kinda nice. Anyway, I work again in 6 hours, and have a Japanese test the next day, so I need to get some sleep.

[/ANGST]

If you read all that, congratulations I guess. Sorry I unloaded on you all like that. I just haven't been able to vent in a long time, and all my good venting friends live places where it's too expensive to call them. I really need to get to bed. I feel like hell. I promise I'll be back to the usual stuff by next post, whenever that may be. Night all.

-Peter

Fuck. Yes.

2007-01-31T09:04:43Z

This is Free Bird. On Expert. With 5 Stars. Damn my arm hurts right now.

This is what the top tier of Expert mode now looks like on my PS2. Damn you Dick Dale, you're making me look bad! Still, the curve has a pleasing aesthetic effect.

Anyway, been busy lately, and had to deal with a bit of a computer explosion earlier tonight. Everything is stable now, but I think it may be time for me to take that secondary HDD and replace it. School 5 days a week, work the other 2, Guitar Hero whenever I have a free minute or so. Such is life. As soon as I start sleeping again, I'll start writing more too. Promise.

Not dead!

2007-01-11T05:10:41Z

Holy crap, been a while. Sorry 'bout that, all. See, thing is last time I posted I was having a really shitty time. A cat that I'd had for 18 and a half years (so, all my life minus 6 months) had just died, I was sick, my friends were having crises of their own. Just not a fun time. After a week or so, I was feeling better, but by then I was buried in exams and didn't have time to post. Then came the Cristmas holidays, during which I was working pretty much every day. Again, didn't think much of posting when I had the time to. Much more interested in things like Zelda on the Wii or Viva Pinata on 360. Honestly, right now I should be studying for my Japanese class. Oh well, it's been too long since I've written anything and I felt that I should eliminate any rumours of my death. So yeah, not dead. Also feeling better.

So recently my uncle died. That's a real shame, as I never got to meet him. He was the only relative that I had (I'm aware of) who was still living back in my family's hometown of Ipswitch, Australia. He was 65. He also had Down syndrome and never had a will. This means that I've spent the last little while dealing with the Queensland Public Trustee. Fun times. Their office is trying to track down all surviving Worthingtons so that they can sort uncle Neal's affairs. This would be cool, except that noone ever seems to know where my brother Clive is. Last I heard he was living in Kingston, but that was about 5 years ago. He doesn't really give up to date contact information to any of us other 4 kids. Leslie, Julie, Heather and I are all accounted for, so that just leaves Clive. This whole thing is proving to be far trickier than it should be.

Anyway, it has become apparent to me over the last three days of class that all that Japanese that I learned back in that rushed course in May has drained out of my head. Before I can really get into the second year stuff, I need to refresh all my first year Nihongo. I'm off to study a while. Later.

!

Oh hey cool, I can put tags on my posts now! When did that happen! I'm totally tagging this one with something. But what? What indeed..

pause

2006-12-04T07:59:28Z

Ok everybody, I just realized how long it's been since I've written on here. There is a logical explanation for it. The last couple of weeks have been up there among my shittier and I'm not really feeling that awesome right now. As such, I'm not all that motivated to write. I'll be back at this in a week or so when I've had a chance to feel better. In the meantime, sorry 'bout the dearth of updates. Until then, keep checking your friends page or wherever you have me. I'll be back sooner or later.

-Peter

The Wii! And Scariness.

2006-11-22T12:13:01Z

Ok, so I got myself a Wii. It was a misadventure full of waking up at 5 in the damned morning, freezing my ass off for 6 hours outside a future shop, and getting the last one that the store had, while feeling guilty seeing the crestfallen expression on my little sister's boyfriend's face because he missed getting one by so little. We'd arranged and agreed in advance on what would happen if the three of us (Myself, him, and Monica) couldn't get three consoles. Monica was first, because she did the driving and was getting it as a birthday present for someone else. I was second because I'd planned fucking everything, had been calling stores all week trying to set up the best attack route for Wiis, and generally had been pulling out my hair trying to get everyone who wanted to camp (There were 5 of us going for 3 systems. Scheduling sucks.) coordinated. Mike was last as he was along for the ride, but didn't really have to do much for it. Also, he wasn't able to show up until 2 hours after the rest of us. Not his fault, but still. Man did I feel awful when it turned out that there were only 2 systems left when it got to our group. Monica got hers, I got mine, and Mike... yeah. Poor guy's face just dropped. Luckily Nintendo seems to be on top of shipping more consoles out with some regularity so he should have one in a week or so. I think I'm going to get him one of those "2000 Wii Points" cards as a "sorry you got screwed on launch day" token. He's 16 and doesn't have a credit card, so he needs those things if he's going to get anything off of the Virtual Console. He's a good kid and he really did deserve to get one, as he was out there with chilling with us for the majority of the time. Basically I'd be giving him a few retro games downloads. Nothing like a couple of N64 games to say "shit dude, tough break."

As for the system itself, lemme put it this way. The night before Wii came out, thanks to finally scraping everything together at the last minute and having to wake up way early, I got less than 2 hours of sleep. I was working that night at 6:00. I got home around 1:00, set up the Wii, and played until 5:15 when I had to leave. The smart thing to do would've been to take a quick nap in the time I had so that I'd be good for work. No way in hell though. The Wii is awesome. Motion sensor works better than I expected (It's not perfect, but it's the first time this has really been tried, so it's more than acceptable) and the graphics, while not as awesome as my 360 pumps out, are perfectly respectable. Wii Sports is a lot of fun, but I wish they hadn't been sold out of extra controllers when I got to the front of the line. I'd really like to play some multi with others. As it is, Mat and Monica have their system set up now, so I've gone over there a couple of times with my Wiimote and we've had some two player stuff going on. (they have one Wiimote, so do I) Tennis is solid, but the real star is Bowling. Too damned fun. Don't know what it is about it, but it's great. I've heard people saying that Golf isn't so good, but I don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's crazy awesome is what it is. I've gotten quite good at it, and it's by far one of the most relaxing games I've played since Animal Crossing. Turning your TV room into a virtual driving range is just so fucking cool. Boxing and Baseball suck. That's all there is to say about them. Still, for a free game that was shipped in the box with the system, 2 great games, one good game, and 2 crappy games is a decent deal. If I'd paid, I'd feel a bit slighted, but this was a free disc that has two really good games on it. I'll take it.

Also got Rayman and Monkey Ball. They were sold out of everything else, but I didn't care. Those were the two I'd intended to get anyway, so I'm cool with that. I know, I know. Zelda, right? Why didn't you want to get Zelda? Well, I do. Thing is, when I play it, I want to play it properly. I've ordered the component cables for the Wii direct from Nintendo, and as soon as they get here, I'll buy Zelda. In the meantime, I ain't playing it without widescreen progressive scan mode when the option will be available in a week or so. I've waited this long, I can wait the week while the cables get here. Quick impressions on the games:

Rayman
Lots and lots and lots of fun. The bunnies are adorable. The minigames all work great, with a couple of exceptions. The exceptions are infuriating, but whatever, it's still fun. My only real gripe is the reuse of the same minigames over and over. It was kinda irritating when the same mechanics would show up in a different setting, essentially making two or three games out of the same activity, but now I'm about halfway through the game and they're throwing games at me that are just faster versions of games that I've already beaten with "2" added to the end of the name. If your game boasts 70 minigames, this is not the kind of shit you should be counting. Grrr... Still love it though.

Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
The single player game is fantastic. Don't know if you've played monkey ball before or not, but it was pretty much made to be played with a tilt sensor. The Wii now makes that possible and it doesn't disappoint. Also, the boss fights are ace. So, we have stellar single player modes, how about the multi on this one? Let's face it, as fun as the single player always is, Monkey Ball has always been about the party games. Unfortunately, although this game does boast 50 minigames as well, and they are all different, (which Rayman can't claim) only a few of them are any fun. Some feel completely and fundamentally broken. (Paraglider, for example) Others are just incredibly tedious. Monkey Target is still fun, always has been, and some new ones like darts are spectacularly entertaining for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. On the whole though, it's more thna 4 times the minigames of any previous Monkey Ball, but still about the same number of games that are actually worth playing. You just need to wade through a bunch more crap than before to get to them.

So, that's the Wii. I'm sure I'll have more to say on that later, but for now there's that "Scariness" part of the post title. What's scary? Well, It's now almost 5 in the morning, I've been writing for a while. At around 4:30 I was standing in my bathroom and decided that I didn't want to get ready for bed yet. What did I do? Well, on a whim, I decided to see how much of a trendoid I could make myself out to be. I did my best Trendy McPopcollar getup. This started when I decided that I had a bunch of hair gel left over from those times in High School when I actually wore it that I was never going to use again. I thought "Hey, why not have some fun with it?" and made myself a nice little trendy hairstyle. I gotta say, if it weren't so un-me, I could pull this shit off. I looked pretty good. So then I thought about the idea of personal Halloween. It's something I've been toying with for a while. Get myself and a bunch of friends together, the kind of people who hate the one-night-stand bars. Bars like Cowboys or the Roadhouse. All of us dress up like we actually fit in there and spend the night pretending to be like them. It's Halloween, but nobody knows it but you. Could be a fun time, if only for the chance to play act as someone you'd never want to be, just for the hell of it. I decided that I was going to start on my costume. Light yellow polo shirt, (collar popped, of course) tight, ripped jeans, (not actually pre-ripped. I ruined this pair myself, but nobody needs to know that) and of course, aviator glasses. Then I took a look in the mirror. It was very, very unsettling. I looked way too natural dressed up as the anti-me. Sometimes you gotta wonder about alternate dimension versions of yourself, and I kinda met one tonight. This is the Peter that goes to Cowboys every Friday night to pick up some barely-18 drunk girl. I didn't like him much. *shudder.* Odd, disturbing experience for me. It started out all in good fun, but there was just something about how easily the look hung on me that freaked me out. Anyway, now it's 10 after 5 and I really wanna go to bed. Night.

Guitar Hero 2 owns my wrists.

2006-11-16T23:17:14Z

Ok, ow. I've played a lot of GH2 over the past few days. I mean, A LOT. I now have every song in the game beaten on Expert, which is an awesome achievement for me and makes me very, very pleased with myself for no real reason at all. Yay! I totally have this useless skill mastered! But, whatever. It's fun. Problem is that after running through the massive solo at the end of Megadeth's Hangar 18 so many times (that song took me about 30 tries before I could beat it. Fucking Megadeth.) I think I blew out my wrists. Thankfully, when Freebird popped up after Hangar 18 was over, I beat it on the first try. (got 4 stars, too!) At least I didn't put my wrists through any more stress. Time for a cooldown period, cause, yeah. Ow. Very ow. That, or I could start on the bonus songs. I only have about 5 of those beaten, and that means there's 14 more... NO! Bad Peter! Rest now. Guitar Hero later.

BUY THE GAME ALREADY, EVERYONE. CHRIST! It's only the best thing available for anything in the history of ever. It will hold this title for exactly 3 more days until the Wii comes out. Some Wii game may topple the Guitar Hero series from it's perch, but it'll have to be an awesome one.

Thinking of the Wii, I'm camping for it. Well, ok. Not camping exactly. I'm working the night before it comes out, and the night after it comes out, so I only have about a 16 hour window between the end of my shift on Saturday and the start of my shift on Sunday. In the between though, I'll be getting up extra early and making the pilgrimage to Future Shop at about 7. They open at 10, and when I called to check the guy said they'd have about 80 Wiis for sale, so I should be safe. That's the hope, anyway. I better be able to get one on Sunday morning dammit. I've been looking forward to this for too long. WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

Guitar Hero 2 owns my life.

2006-11-13T11:30:10Z

My god, who would allow me to have this game? When I went to EB on Tuesday to pick up my preordered copy of Guitar Hero 2, I was informed of a fuck up on the manufacturer/shipper's part. See, my EB was not shipped enough copies of GH2 to meet preorder demand. As I'd only had my preorder for a month and a half, I was told that my copy would be in Wednesday the 15th. This is the day after reading break ends, which sucks as I was intending to devote my long weekend to the glory that is Guitar Hero. What's a boy to do? Well, I played a lot of my GH2 demo while pining for the real thing, then went and saw Borat. Borat was fucking awesome, and everyone needs to see it. Not really relevant to this post. The relevance is that when I got back from the movie, there was a message on my machine. "Hey, this is *some dude* from EB Games. We had someone cancel a pre-order for Guitar Hero 2 and since you're next on the list, you can pick it up any time."

GLEE!!!!

So I now have Guitar Hero 2. And a new guitar for it as well. I think my plans for modding my guitar are going to fall flat now, as my original guitar has some sentimental value to it and the new one is just plain fucking awesome. It's cherry red, with black trim. So sexy. Well, as sexy as a little plastic guitar can get, at any rate. Also feels like it's better put together than the older model. Thicker guards at important points in the cord and a textured finish on the body instead of just smooth plastic. Very nice. What about the songs, you're asking in my head? Fucking amazing. I've heard people saying that the track list is not as good as the first Guitar Hero. That is a matter of opinion, and should not affect review scores in the way that it has. My opinion on the tracklist: If you don't like it, you can just go fuck yourself. It's awesome, so fuck off and leave it alone. The only thing that could have made it better was the Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," but that song was in the first game anyway, so it doesn't matter. Damn is it ever hard though. Much harder than Guitar Hero was. I was able to get 5 stars on expert for all but the last 3 songs in GH. In GH2, I started playing on expert mode, and am still doing so, but I've been repeatedly raped through the pants by many a song. It took me a hell of a long time to get through "Psychobilly Freakout," and then there was the total mental anguish that was "Miserlou." Now I'm stuck on Megadeth's "Hangar 18" which is the last song before unlocking the final encore song, "Free Bird. Of course, in order to unlock "Free Bird" for quick play and cooperative modes, I've gone back and played through the entire game on Hard mode as well. Gotta have a full tracklist for co-op.

Co-op, you ask? Why yes, and it's fucking great! Especially if, like me, you're surrounded by people who don't ever really get into rhythm games but want to play with the shiny guitar. If you're someone who's really into the genre, and thus quite good at the games, you're often going to end up having to either trade off with someone over and over switching difficulty levels with each movement of the controller, or you'll have to play at a level that's nothing resembling a challenge to you and is frankly just boring. This brings us to GH2's co-operative mode. The genius of it is that each player selects their own difficulty level. So while I'm playing on Expert, my companion will be accompanying me on Medium or Hard. In some cases, Easy, but I won't name names and embarass folks. One player takes on the role of lead guitar, and the second plays either bass or rhythm guitar, depending on the song. Bass can be really easy compared to guitar. I've played bass quite a few times now and bass on Expert is about equal to Guitar on either a difficult Medium or a simple Hard song. It's not a really big challenge (with a couple of exceptions. "YYZ" has some brutal bass solos, for example.) but if you've got a good song it's a lot of fun and gives the other player a chance to feel like they're playing the blistering solos. Plus, the fact that the two of you are actually playing together and that you're sharing a scorebar is a really cool thing.

Guitar Hero 2, final verdict. If you're only playing for the single player, grab GH1 first if you haven't already, and then get a stand along disc copy of GH2 to go with it. It's cheaper, since you only need the one guitar, and you'll end up with the full tracklist of about 150 songs (including the unlockables of course) to jam along to. If you have friends though, get the bundle pack for Guitar Hero 2 so you have a second guitar. The multiplay is the main improvement in this version, and it is really damned good. Great as GH1 was, it must be admitted that the multiplayer mode sucked balls. Big, sweaty, smelling vaguely of cheese, hairy balls. Now the multiplayer mode is as awesome as the rest of the game. If you have 2 guitars, a playstation 2 and a copy of Guitar Hero 2, I fully believe that you may be set for gaming for the next 8 months at least. I know I played the original almost every night for a year, up until I lost posession of my disk in August, and that was just the single player mode. Now that it's got competent multiplay I may never need another game. 'Course, I'll buy more games, and play them too. The point is that I could very well just play Guitar Hero for a year and not notice that that was it. God help me next year when Guitar Hero comes to the Xbox 360 and goes online. I'll be playing with people from everywhere, downloading new songs to play. Hell, if they keep up a steady stream of good downloadable songs on Xbox Live, I may just never leave the house again.

So yeah. Get the game. Play the game. Love the game. I order it.

EDIT: Oh yeah. Explaining my two week hiatus. I had a fuckton of exams and was getting about 2 hours of sleep a night. Didn't really feel like writing in that situation. Now it's reading week, and I have 2 whole days of nothing, (school or work!) so I'm actually writing things again. Now you know.

ZOMBI

2006-10-31T09:50:20Z

Of course, if you don't get the reference and think I just misspelled Zombie for the title of this post, you need to do your research. I'll give you a hint: Original cut of a Romero flick. Try and figure out which one.

Anyway, I have my usual sad night at home planned for later on today. It's halloween for God's sake. That means creepy movies! Unfortunately, creepy movies aren't my thing. I could always go into work and catch a free screening of Saw 3, but I find slasher flicks to be completely boring. There is one subgenre of horror films that I've always been drawn to for one reason or another though. If you need me to tell you at this point, you're fucking stupid and go away. That's right, I loves me them zombies.

Maybe it's that they're always such an accurate reflection of the scarier social issues of their time, maybe it's the commentary that they give on they way people act towards each other, maybe it's that they always end up having a few survivors holed up somewhere and almost turn into a character study. There's just something about the way the movies are that makes them great. Fear of viral epidemics, the space race, brashly mockign the occult, simply sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. These have all raised the dead in one movie or another, it's always an interesting look at people and zombies are one scare that you can really think about. With that in mind, here's what I've collected for myself to choose from tomorrow night while handing out candy to the little kids who come by the house:

The Romero trilogy:
Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead

The Raimi/Campbell trilogy:
The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead 2: The Book of the Dead
The Army of Darkness (Evil Dead 3)

Misc Zombies:
Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake)
Shawn of the Dead
28 Days Later

Sci-Fi Horror:
Alien
Aliens

Comic Relief:
Tremors Quadrilogy (Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins)
Gremlins
Bubba Ho-Tep

...Yes, I actually own all these movies. The only hard part will be narrowing this list down to two or three movies that I can fit into one night. Right now, it's looking like I'll definitely be watching The Evil Dead, and Tremors (the original) with the possibility of Night of the Living Dead if I'll still be able to get to bed by 2 when the time comes to make the call. Sound good to you guys? Now that you know my halloween zombie tradition, what's your ceremonial halloween activity? House party? Candy binge? Trick or treating despite the fact that you're way too old for it? Either way, have yourselves a good one.

-Pete

Geek level up! DING!

2006-10-25T08:40:08Z

As mentioned here a couple of posts ago, I am not currently in possesion of my Guitar Hero disk. This lead to crazy withdrawl until last Monday when I secured a copy of the demo for Guitar Hero 2. This demo is fantastic. Only four songs, but just what I needed to keep the love going until the 7th when the game gets its full release. Unfortunately, though the game will come with a new guitar, the demo required me to use my old one. This guitar had been on its last legs for a while now and finally died around Wednesday during a particularly heated runthrough of Rush's YYZ. Cue withdrawl symptoms. Being the cautious type, I'm not one to open up technology and look at the inside when I could void the warranty. Being the nerdy type, something breaking is seen as a perfect excuse to pry the bugger open and see how it works. These two aspects of my personality were in direct conflict with each other until around 10:30 tonight. I decided, fuck it. In two weeks, I'll have a new guitar anyway. Plus, there's a chance that I could figure out what's wrong and fix it up thus enabling me to play some more of the demo TONIGHT. Well, that's a temptation that I just couldn't resist. So out came the screwdriver, wirestrippers, electrical tape, soldering iron, and various other things that I like to have around when I'm fucking around with unfamiliar wiring. Busted that motherfucker open and was quite surprised by how simple it really is. The strum bar simply presses a button on a circuit board when it's pressed up or down, triggering the strum response. Pretty slick there. The whammy bar is just attatched to a spring and a sensor for how far it's moved. The tilt sensor? Just a couple of weights that slide around in a tube and relay back to the main board under the strum bar. I don't know what I was expecting, but surely a guitar has to have more than that to it? Right? Hm... guess not.

Happily, upon opening the thing up, I immediately spotted the problem. One of the wires relaying the main board back to the playstation had snapped. 20 minutes of work later (I have a shitty soldering iron that takes a while to heat up...) and the thing now works just as well as when I got it. I even fixed the squeak in the strum bar. My guitar is back on top, baby! Fuckin' right!

Of course, now I know how it works. Now I have seen the parts. Now I could, dare I say it, customize the fuck out of the body and keep the guitar working just as well as ever. That's right, folks. Peter's considering a casemod for his guitar. Naturally, I don't want to fuck around too much until I have backup. I'll wait until I get the other guitar with GH2. Still, then I'll have two guitars. One with an already voided warranty. Glee! Now taking suggestions on what my guitar should become. It needs to be something simple, as I've never been struck with the urge to casemod before and I want to tackle something that I can manage in my unpracticed state. Also, something not too expensive to make. I'm a student here, people. Funds are tight. Still, if anyone has an idea, lemme have it. Come the 7th, I'll have an extra guitar sitting around I can mess with as much as I want...

Fucking fuck fuck fuck! (and games!)

2006-10-23T00:42:03Z

Sorry about the no-update on Wednesday. Those who don't go to the U of C would not know this, but apparently the pro-life rally was on Monday and Tuesday ONLY. This means that I spent the better portion of Tuesday making shirts to wear on a day when they mean nothing. I wore my shirt around all day anyway, becuase the alternative would be to be naked from the waist up, but it still kinda felt like a pointless exercise. Oh well, when they come back for their next rally in March, I'll be ready for 'em. The title of this post? Yeah, that's the frustration I had when I found out they'd packed up and left before I could go see 'em. Grrr.

Naturally, I needed to blow off some steam after this, so I went to EB to pick up something new to blow up pixels in. My intention was to get Saint's Row for the 360, as I'd heard a whole lot of good about it and wanted something to tide me over until the next GTA comes out. (the 31st! wooo!) Failing that, the 4th Splinter Cell just came out this week (to really good reviews) and that's a series I've been in love with since day 1. Unfortunately I ran into the only real problem I have with the Xbox 360. As great as the games are, (and they really are) I have a hell of a hard time justifying spending $70 on one. Especially when other systems will sell their games for $60 maximum, more likely $50. And then there's the DS, which has brought me nothing but fantastic game after fantastic game for about $40 apeice. When the DS delivers such a fantastic quality experience, no matter how great a game is on the 360, it's really difficult to let myself spend almost twice as much cash on it. I went up and stared at the 360 games for a while, looking at the games, the looking at the price tags, then looking at the games again, back to the price tags. This went on a while. Finally I just walked over the the DS section and grabbed Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime Adventure. $40, of course. I've put a few hours into it now and it's fantastic fun. Incredibly cute, simple gameplay. You're a little blob of blue slime that has to stretch and spring himself into enemies and sometimes pilot a giant cartoony tank. Your goal is to save the 100-some citizens of Boingburg who have been kidnapped by malicious platipi. The game basically uses only one button to play, and still manages to have a lot of depth. So good. And nearly half the price Saint's Row would have cost me. Y'know, I do really like that 360, but until the prices become a bit more sane I fear it might just gather dust while the DS gets all the love. Then again, maybe there's another way....

See, I wasn't entirely honest. I do have Saint's Row now. Kinda. It's in the mail on the way to my house. Earlier today I got that "man, I wish Saint's Row wasn't so fucking expensive, I really want to play it" feeling. I knew that there was no way in hell I'd spend $70 on it though, so I started to explore my options. Let me say right now, eBay kicks ass. New copy, still sealed: $50, shipping included. For less than most new Xbox or PS2 games would cost me, Saint's Row is now on its way. I can stand to wait the week or two while it ships, and now I have the game. I think I'll be buying the majority of my 360 games on eBay from here on out. This way I can still afford to eat and other important things of the like.

ABORT ME!

2006-10-18T05:39:49Z

Well guys, it's ready. Sorry the picture's a bit artifact-y. I convinced SBeth to bring a real digital camera in tomorrow, so if all goes well I should have some nice pictures of whatever goes down when I hit their pro-life rally. I've actually got two shirts. The other one is just black with white letters. Total cost for two shirts: $35 at Wal-Mart. Plus I still have shitloads of fabric paint left. I'm thinking next weekend I'm going to get all artistic on a pair of old Chuck Taylors that I never wear. Might make them worth wearing around again. Limitless fun for only $35, I highly reccommend it.

Until tomorrow! (unless I get curb-stomped or something by an angry christian. Although they do have security on hand to make sure there's no incident.)

My Valiant Quest to Disturb Shit

2006-10-17T01:46:22Z

Did you know that the Rocket (A custom T-shirt store around Calgary) has certain things that they will not put on a t-shirt? It's true! They apparently have some kind of ethical standards, despite the fact that their binder of templates is full of naked cartoon women and box art from old porn movies. Allow me to elaborate:

Ok, so all this week, the Campus Pro-Life organization is having rallies around the University of Calgary, displaying pictures of the holocaust and blacks lynched by the KKK next to photos of aborted fetuses. I, obviously, don't think this is cool at all, but they have the right to say whatever they want. As long as I have the right to talk back to them. While trying to think up ways that I could generally get in their way this week, including wearing a coathanger on my head or a giant mardi-gras style fetus mask, I eventually settled on the less extreme t-shirt method. What to put on this t-shirt though? I thought about this for a little bit, and finally decided that "ABORT ME BABY" would be appropriate. Not only is it short and to the point, but as long as I don't have a comma in it, it could either mean "Abort me, baby" or be a kind of lower class british way of saying "Abort my baby," which given my Australian roots works quite nicely. I decided that this t-shirt would be black and tight-fitting, with the lettering done in hot pink with sparkles, just for the hell of it. I had it all planned out, and with a fist full of cash and a heart full of song, headed down to the Rocket to get my shirt made between classes today.

THEY WOULDN'T FUCKING MAKE IT.

Honestly, you're willing to slap a nude chick on a shirt that could be worn anywhere, but when you see the word "abort" you say "yeah.... I'm thinking no." What the fuck? I had the $26 ready too! ($15 for shirt, $1 per letter) It's not like I wasn't serious about this. I wanted that damn shirt! Now I have to try and find a place that sells fabric paints. So help me god, I'm going to finish the week by going to their damn display proudly wearing "ABORT ME BABY" across my chest in sparkly pink writing. It's not just about the Pro-Life group anymore. Now it's about being able to express myself how I damn well please, even if that means offending some uptight motherfuckers who want to control other people's bodies. Anyone in the Calgary area know where I can get ahold of some fabric paints? This is kinda urgent. Preferably somewhere I can make it to and back in my 3 hour break tomorrow between classes. When I have this shirt, I'm going to walk into the Rocket when that guy is working again, point at it, flip him off, and walk out. At this point, I really see no alternative course of action.

PS. I got the demo for Guitar Hero 2 recently. So. Damn. Good. Can't stop playing, even though my guitar is busted and it's only four songs. The full version is going to ruin me come November 7th. That is all.

miffy495 @ 2006-10-07T01:20:00

2006-10-07T07:23:20Z

I have just experienced firsthand how far an addict will go to placate themselves. Sadly, I was the addict in this scenario. Allow me to explain:

About a month ago, I attended a party with many close friends of mine. This was one of our semi-annual geek parties. What we do is completely ignore the fact that we're supposed to be adults for a night. We all gather at someone's place, carting whatever we feel like with us. This includes game consoles/games, board games, RPG character sheets and dice, Magic: The Gathering cards and many other incredibly geeky pursuits. These geek parties have no alcohol, but typically do include a 3 or 4 in the morning run to the nearest 7-11 for a caffiene top up to get us through the night. If we're feeling adventurous, we may go to Denny's once the sun comes up or something. Just to keep from feeling completely like shit. A month after the release of Guitar Hero, I brought it along to one of these partes to allow my friends to see what I'd been talking about. It was a huge success, and I've been obliged to bring it to every geek party since. So, last month, it was with me at the party.

Unfortunately, mine was not the only PS2 there. Russel, a very good friend of mine who (unfortunately) I hardly ever see had brought his along as well. This is not really a problem, as it allows some people to be co-op rolling in Katamari while someone else rocks out in GH. The problem was that the PS2 being used for Guitar Hero when it came time to pack everything up and go back to being normal people was his. This meant that while I did get the Guitar taken home with me, the game disc was left in his PS2. As I said, I hardly every see this guy, so I've been left without any Guitar Hero for over a month now. It's been driving me a little crazy. I need that rocking out to make my day complete. So what's a geek to do?

Well, that brings us back to where we started. The depths which I plumbed to alleviate my GH cravings. You see, Gamespot recently posted videos of the time they've been spending with the latest build of Guitar Hero 2. It's due for release exactly a month from today, and I've preordered it (of course) but that's still too far off for me to be OK with not playing GH for that stretch of time. And there it was, as I watched the videos. Those sweet, sweet notes scrolling across the screen in front of my eyes, almost taunting me. I'm almost ashamed to admit what I did next. I grabbed the Gibson SG off my desk (it's propped up next to the computer monitor with my consoles) and started jamming along with the videos. There was no interactivity. Just scrolling notes and my own fingers moving across the keys trying to play along with what I could not. Still, it was a good feeling. Miserlou was damn hard by the way. Some others had crazy solos but were easily manageable. I think the videos I was playing along to were on Hard difficulty, but it felt almost like Expert did on GH 1. I'm really looking forward to honing my Gibson SG skills in a month. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see Russel before then, but if not there's always Gamespot.

Now that the confession is out of the way, let me say how awesome Dead Rising is. You only need to know one thing. Last night I was attacked by a clown juggling chainsaws who I pelted with nerf balls for a while before finally shooting. Awesome, yes? Today I got to fight a guy in a grocery store who'd outfitted a shopping cart with all manner of spikey death instruments for zombie killin'. Fighting psychopaths isn't the main draw of the game, but just seeing their cutscenes is more than enough to make me want to fight them multiple times. At the end, when that Clown dropped his chainsaws and fell face first onto them, laughing maniacally while his body was shredded by his own weaponry, I just could not stop grinning. Sick? Yes. Twisted? Yes. Am I a horrible person? Probably. Still a metric fuckton of fun though.

Tangent complete, I will now watch some of my newly accquired Transformers DVDs and go to bed. Night all.

The Live Dilemma

2006-09-25T07:08:25Z

So today I played a game online. May not sound like a big deal unless you know what kind of gamer I am. I usually hate online games. I hate the typical online gamer, I hate CounterStrike 1337 kids, and MMOs just kind of irritate me. If you read Penny Arcade, you know about John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory (Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad) and it's something that I subscribe to. Nevertheless, there I was with a $120 (!!!!) wireless adapter for my Xbox, and a $60/year subscription to Microsoft's online service. Seemed like a bit much just for the priveledge of downloading game demos and playing Project Gotham against the one other person I know with the system, so I decided to test the waters and see if the much touted Xbox Live service could actually provide me with that much sought-after and seldom found fun online gaming experience.

I looked at the games in my library. (4 of them, as I just got the system) Fully half were for one player only, (Lego Star Wars 2 and Dead Rising) one was a first person shooter (Perfect Dark Zero) and there's no way in hell I'm going back to online shooters after my last venture into the culture with Unreal Tournament 2004, so that left me with Project Gotham Racing 3. A game that I didn't really want, but came free with the system. I've been playing it a bit, and even though racing games aren't really my thing, I have to admit it's pretty fun for what it is. Again, I've been playing it in matches against Chris, who also got it free with the system, so I've had some experience with its online as well. I'd just never played it against strangers before. I logged in to Live (Gamertag Miffy495, if anyone reading this happens to have an account and wants to add me. If you're reading this, it's a pretty good bet you're someone I'd be happy to play with) and booted up the game. And just for shits and giggles, I plugged in the headset microphone that came with the system. If I was playing with strangers, why not talk with them while I do it? I was going all out.

The first thing I hear as I enter the online lobby is the voice of a 12 year old boy saying "Man, that is so gay!" I almost logged out right there. It was as if all my fears about the online community had been validated in a fifth of a second. But I steeled my resolve and decided to play a round with them and just listen in on the conversation for a while. I was Jane Goodall to their apes. Jaques Cousteau to their slimy underwater critters. Steve Irwin to their tasteless topical joke. Sometimes there's just a bit too much of an urge to act like a sociologist, you know? So I listened in. The 12 year old and his friend went on talking for a while, when suddenly another one of the racers spoke up. This guy was a full grown man, and talked like one as well. Not something I'd expected to run into on the 'net today. He said "I dare you guys to go a single race without using the word 'gay.'" I had found an ally. There were five of us in the race altogether. I had now heard the voices of 3. When the kids started to insult the guy who spoke up, I decided it was time to get involved. I came to his defence, saying "What the hell would you guys do if someone here actually was gay?" This caught them off guard.

"Are you?" They asked.
"No, but I have many close friends who are. When you're allowed to drink, try going to bars with drag queens sometimes. They're very fun people."

They had been silenced. My ally and I had overcome the twerps, so we started talking to each other. Turns out he lives nearby, in Medicine Hat, and was playing because his ten year old son liked to watch him race. The sound of normal human conversation also encouraged our fifth racer to talk. He was a very nice 23 year old from California. We talked for a while and had three really good races. It was a very pleasant experience. Unfortunately, it ended prematurely when some jackass logged on and just had to tell the world how high he was at that second. We told him in no uncertain terms to shut up, engage in civil conversation, or fuck off. And there is the downside of the internet. There was no way we could make him do this. We finished our race and all decided to quit out. That was the end of my online adventure.

So now I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I met two really nice guys and had fun racing them. On the other, the experience was greatly marred by the presence of three fuckwits. I don't know whether it was enough fun to cancel out the fuckwits or not. I'm feeling very torn between "That was great!" and "I hate most internet people." I think I'll have to go online again on Tuesday night or something after class and see what happens. It definitely requires further investigation.

And no, there's still no way in hell I'm playing another shooter online in the foreseeable future.

Drunk with management.

2006-09-23T08:39:33Z

I am very happy with how today went. Today was the opening of the Calgary International Film Festival. As a completely green projectionist who's entire career up to this point has been spent in anticipation of this moment, it was quite high-stress. Everything went smoothly. So smoothly in fact, that I was done everything that I needed to do about 2 hours early. So all four of the projectionists from my theater gathered in the downstairs projection booth around a case of beer and toasted the successful start of the festival. Then we toasted it again. Then we got sick of toasting and decided to get pretty fucked up. For the first time, I feel like I'm accepted as management at the theater. I've been working as a manager for a little over a month now, but I was still not quite in with the others. The festival has brought us together, and I'm feeling really damn good right now. Even Scott, who'd been my mentor for as long as I've been training, made a point of toasting me specifically for how well and how quickly I've progressed as a projectionist. Any feedback, positive or negative, from him is incredibly hard to come by. As such, this has made me amazingly proud of myself. Fiona, I've been drunk with many times. Pete, I've had a couple of drinks with, and we get along well. Scott is a very distant person and I feel like we're more than just coworkers after tonight. We're not friends or anything. He's far too into the management trip for that. He seems to respect me more now. I honestly feel like I've really earned something tonight. We always got along alright, but now we're not mentor-apprentice. He's acting like we're colleagues.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. There's nine days left of the festival yet, and I work in about 7 hours. I need to sleep and sober up before then. I just wanted to get this down in writing before I forgot about it. Night everybody.

Recess is over...

2006-09-11T06:53:35Z

So school starts up again tomorrow and this is my last chance to do some gaming this summer. What's that you say? Star Fox came out on monday for the DS? Sounds like a fucking plan. I haven't played any of the new Star Fox games since the N64. So, I've booted up a game of Star Fox DS, as well as taking about an hour to blast through Star Fox 64 again. (hey, it's a classic.) Impressions on the DS version? OK.

Star Fox DS has some really cool new additions, some frustrating, some awesome. Of particular awesome note is that the game controls everything except for the firing with the touch screen. Want to do a barrel roll? Draw a circle. Want to turn right? Move the stylus to the right. It's all very intuitive and responsive. U turns and loops are a bit more complex, so the touch screen has little icons that you can tap to do them. Very simple stuff. Also, bombs can be placed anywhere on the map by dragging a "B" icon from it's regular point on the touch screen to a spot on the mini-map where you want an explosion. Firing is the only thing that you use the buttons for. Because of this, you can use any button for it. No matter what you press, you're firing. I love these controls, and I can't wait to have developers catch on and start releasing ports of things like Privateer, Crimson Skies, (hey, they're bringing Mechassault, and it's the same company, so why not?) and Secret Weapons Over Normandy to the system. It really is amazingly good control for a flight combat game. However, it's not all flight combat...

Between all the combat you have a map show up on the touch screen. On this map, you draw what you want each character to do within the turn time allowed. Once you've got it all set up, you double tap the screen and both you and your enemies play out their orders. This works far better than I'd expected, and I'm quite a fan of this new layer of depth. The only downside to this part is that the amount of turns given to you is incredibly low. You get two more turns every time you take down an enemy base, and you'll soon spend your time hunting frantically for bases to capture so that you can get a bit more time to finish the mission. Any turns that you have unused on the completion of your mission are added to a counter. Every 5 turns on the counter gets you an extra ship. The number of turns that you have are your main enemy, as dogfights usually are not too much of an issue.

Dogfights happen whenever you contact an enemy on the map. You then go head to head with them in the manner that I described earlier. Again, very intuitive and very smooth. Usually not too challenging, but when they are, they are brutal. This leads to a level of frustration, as most maps have a bunch of enemies that are no problem and then one that is skull-fuckingly difficult. And you have no idea which one this will be until you try to fight it. It's taken me about 7 tries to beat the level on Aquas because of a fight against two giant fish things that really pound your fighter hard. I finally figured out how to beat them, and can now handle the level, but again: 7 tries. It's only the 5th-ish level as well. The other enemies in the level were a snap, but for whatever reason, those fish raped me through the pants.

While we're on the subject of things that make an otherwise too-easy game really fucking hard, missiles. They take about 3 turns to cross the entire map, and if one hits the Great Fox (your mothership) you lose instantly. This means that you usually get only one chance to take down a missile, and if you blow it, it's all over in a second. No matter how well you were doing with anything else. I've started favoring the use of Slippy Toad to take down missiles, as his ship has plasma cannons on it instead of the regular lazers that everyone else that I have on my team so far has. These cannons enable you to take down a missile quickly, and as taking down a missile involves flying through hoops while firing at it (missing a hoop = death) it means that once you're in range you only need to worry about one or two more hoops rather than trying to concentrate on flying around all over the screen while shooting. Slippy makes the whole process a bit easier, so I recommend going with him.

So yeah. Star Fox Command for the DS. Good, but fucking hard. SO fucking hard. Yet I can't stop playing. It's like Resident Evil 4 in that respect. No matter how many times I died, I just had to see the fucker through. *sigh* I'm going to go now. I'm gonna go to bed, I think. First though, I want to take a second try at that asteroid field level.

And I promise I haven't forgotten about those reviews of the import games. They're coming sometime. Sleep now though. School in the morning.

Edited at 1:45 AM, right after replay of Asteroid Field level: FUUUUUUUCK!!!! Goddamn missile. I got every enemy on the map, EVERY ONE, and then had only Falco to take out this one last missile with. I failed with him. TWICE. Then bang. Three turns for the missile to hit, you lose, despite there being noone else alive to win. Shit.

Bureaucracy makes me laugh.

2006-08-29T12:49:28Z

Hehe. Silly bureaucrats. First, some background:
Being a full time student during the fall and winter, I don't have much time for work. My income becomes sad and puny, like a model of a sick puppy made out of rasins. I don't know what that means, exactly, but it sounded good in my head. Anyway, my income becomes suplemented by a government fund, the Registered Education Savings Plan. This delivers living money to me in the form of a big cheque every August for the duration of my undergrad degree. If I don't go directly into University after high school, (read: no year bumming around first) I lose the money. If I drop out, I lose the money. After 4 years, I lose the money. Basically, I get paid to spend the next three years, as well as last year, in school before taking some time to breathe between degrees or something. This year there was a fuck-up. I'm supposed to get the forms that I fill out for my cash sometime in mid-March. They actually got them to me about 2 weeks ago. I brought them into the University, got all the proper people to sign them, and faxed them back to Ottawa. This brings us to today.

So I open up my mailbox this afternoon before leaving for work, and see an envelope from the Government of Canada. "Oh boy," think I, "They really sent that off fast! My monetary worries are over for the next 8-ish months!" So I open the envelope to examine the contents. No cheque. Instead, there's a nice letter.

"Dear Mr. Worthington,

...Congratulations! Your EAP (Education Assistance Payment) has been approved!

Within a few days of this letter's posting, a cheque representing your entitlement will be mailed to you.

We wish you success in achieving your goals in the coming school year!

Yours Sincerely,
Pierre Bertsoulakis
Manager,
Customer Service"

So, they mail out a letter informing me that they're about to mail a cheque. Wha? In a couple of days, I'll check the mailbox, and there'll be a cheque inside. I would not need a letter to see the government logos stamped all over it, nor will I wonder what it's for, knowing full well that I sent off the forms myself. Why do they feel the need to be so damned redundant? I'm reminded of that Futurama episode where Hermes recieves a letter from the Central Bureaucracy informing him that he is about to recieve a letter from the Central Bureaucracy.

...Hell, at least I got a laugh out of this crap. I've got three unreviewed imports to write about yet, so I'll be putting those up sometime over the coming week. I lucked into two days in a row off work, so either tomorrow or Wednesday, I'll add some more Bitgenerations impressions. Unitl then, good night. Oh, and for those of you wondering after my last post, my stomach troubles did not fade. I was quite ill all week, finally feeling somewhat better yesterday. What an awesome, awesome week that was. If it had been 8 days rather than 7, I may have thrown myself off a building. Thank god time is linear and predictable, and my week of hell is over.

Dotstream

2006-08-22T11:29:53Z

Hey all. It's pretty late and I should be getting some sleep, but I had a really shit day and feel like writing something real quick. Not to bore you with the details, but my shit day involved (in this order):

1.Appartment troubles
2.living on an hour and a half of sleep.
3.Being so tired that I fell asleep at the kitchen table while eating my lunch.
4.Being awoken from said slumber 3 hours later when my boss called to inform me I was a half hour late for work.
5.Stomach problems.
6.Projector malfunction.
7.Multiple Sclerosis (I'm not even fucking kidding)

Anyway, rather than bitch about all that, I'm going to write about Dotstream, read a couple of chapters of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (my standby summer "I have nothing better to read" book. On my 7th or 8th readthrough now) and go to bed. Here goes.

Bitgenerations: DOTSTREAM

Well, how do I start talking about this one? It was the game that first attracted me to the Bitgenerations series. Incredibly simple graphics and controls, but the potentail for a lot of fun. In a nutshell, you choose a coloured line at the beginning of each race. You then have control over how high or low this line is during the course of a race with 6 other lines. This means that you can press either up or down on the directional pad. Those are your controls. Sometimes you may get an item. You use this by pressing A. That's it. The graphics look kind of like that old TRON light-cycle arcade game. Very obviously programmer-art. Despite how simplistic this sounds, it actually has quite a bit of depth to it.

First off, travelling in a straight line is obviously preferable. You lose speed when you turn, so the straighter you can keep your line, the better. There will be obstacles thrown in your way by the racecourse. You will need to swerve to avoid them. The trick is to swerve just enough to slip by without crashing OR losing too much speed. The game also incorporates the idea of slipstreams, which have been used quite a bit in most modern racing games. Essentially, the closer you are to another racer's line, the less drag there is on yours. If you manage to keep yourself right next to another racer's tail, you will steadily gain and eventually overtake them. Kinda cool. Strangely, in my experience with the game this does not seem to work the other way around. You can use slipstreams, but I have yet to see a computer opponent use them. Still, this would only serve to make the game harder, which it really does not need.

This of course brings me to the game's difficulty. This game is brutally hard. Orbital was tricky to get the hang of, but once you understood the principles it was easily manageable. Dotstream, not so much. This game is very, VERY unforgiving. The fact that it seems only the player can use slipstreams or items is quite the blessing, as if your opponents had these tricks as well you'd almost never win a race. Even as it is, winning some of the higher level races can seem like a god-like accomplishment sometimes. This puzzles me, as I was under the impression that Bitgenerations was about bringing new gamers to the fold and letting them enjoy themselves. Dotstream tends to frustrate. I am quite patient with my games, and am steadily improving, but I can easily see many people turned away by the difficulty level that this game poses.

It is worth it though. Dotstream is a great little portable racing game, and one that's easy to pick up and put down whenever life calls you away from your gameboy. Unless you own a PSP, your options for portable racing are essentially this and the various incarnations of Mario Kart. All three are worth your time. A little perseverance will turn Dotstream from a really tough challenge into a really enjoyable racer.

That's it for now. I'm going to bed. My stomach is still killing me. I hope this has remedied itself by the time I go to work.

Wow, been a while.

2006-08-18T10:00:52Z

Hi all. Sorry 'bout the damn long time between posts on that one. Life been busy. Nothing special busy, just "Can't find a new appartment/lots and lots of work/dealing with university bureaucracy" kinda normal life. On another note, I've been on an import binge of late. All of my new games have come from that magical land out East we call Nihon. Well, THEY call Nihon. We usually just go with Japan. Either way, that's where they're comin' from. These new games include most of the Bitgenerations series that Nintendo has released for the GBA in Japan, as well as a new game from the team that made the amazing Warioware called Rhythm Tengoku. I've got a lot of ground to cover if I'm going to talk about them all, so here's part one.

Bitgenerations: ORBITAL

Orbital is a strange beast. It comes from the Bitgenerations series, which you'll be hearing a lot about if you read all of these import impressions. Some background, if you're unaware. Bitgenerations is a new concept from Nintendo based around creating some really simple but really addictive arcade-y games that anyone can get hooked on, and then releasing them at a budget price. Why they're not releasing them in North America is beyond me. Honestly, ORBITAL is in English already. All the menus, everything except the instruction booklet is English. If you want to play it, there's really no stopping you as long as you're armed with a credit card. The "simplicity" strategy seems to be working as well, as last weekend when I was being monitored by my mother after having my wisdom teeth removed, she started to play the game on my DS as well. She has never played any game before. She quite enjoyed ORBITAL. You can see why I'm mistified about the lack of localization.

Of course, it took some explaining for her to get the hang of it. Unfortunately, ORBITAL happens to be one of the most complex of the Bitgenerations games. You control a small planetoid which needs to harness the gravitational pull of larger planetoids to fling itself around a puzzle-like playing field. You crash into smaller planets to grow larger, and if you crash into a larger planet you blow up. Once you're large enough, one planetoid starts to glow. You must then go very close to it but not touch it in order to suck it into your own orbit. You can do this with any planetoid the same size or smaller than you, but capturing the glowing one ends the level. There is also a small moon you can get in each level which will make the level orange on the menu. This seems to mean that you've legitimately completed the level, but I really don't know as the game won't tell you and I can't read the instruction book with my incredibly rudimentary understanding of Japanese. There are 30 levels in all, and I've unlocked 5 extras somehow. It may have been by collecting the moon in each of the 30 regular ones, but I really don't know. Just from the looks of the menu, there may be another 5 to unlock yet, but I can't be sure.

The controls take a bit of getting used to. I had to try the first level about 6 times before I figured out what the hell I was doing. It seems that when I pressed A, I would be sucked closer to the nearest planet's orbit. Pressing B, on the other hand, repelled me from orbit. This is your only means of movement, and really does take some getting used to. By the time you're in the 25-30 range though, playing levels 1-10 is almost zen-like as you slingshot yourself around planetary systems in a near meditative fashion. Lots of fun.

So yeah. Pick up ORBITAL if you can. It's only about $25 from most import websites, and there's no region protection on any of the Game Boy Advance systems so it will play on your GBA, GBASP, GBA Micro, DS, or DS Lite. Really cool little game, with a bit of a frustrating learning curve at the beginning.

RHYTHM TENGOKU

Have you ever played Warioware? Warioware Twisted? Warioware Touched? If you haven't played any of these, then do so right now. They are by far some of the most creative and delightful portable games you can find. Twisted is my personal favorite, but I know some people who swear by Touched or won't play anything but the original. Mix frantic gameplay with really simple controls and adorable graphics and you've got some idea of how awesome this is. Well, the same team that made all those has come up with a new game for the GBA, this time in the music genre (and we all know how much I love that) called Rhythm Tengoku. Loosely translated, Rhythm Paradise. It's a collection of a whole bunch of the type of minigames that you'd come to expect from the team at J.P. Room, but this time instead of lasting only a few seconds each, they're each set to their own bit of music. It's up to you to tap the A button, press directions on the control pad, or use some variation of these two in time with the beat of the song to complete the game. Whether you're plucking the hairs out of an anthropomorphic onion or simply line dancing with a bunch of monkeys, it's always catchy and always fun. I don't really know what else I can say about this. It's Warioware Rhythm, but without the Wario. If that sounds even remotely interesting, you should check it out if you ever get the chance. Plus, it comes with stickers. I just decorated the lid of my DS Lite with them.

hmmm... I just tried to take a picture of my DS to show you, but as we all know, my webcam is shite. I guess you'll just have to imagine a navy blue DS Lite, only now about 10x more adorable. Don't let your head explode from the awesome now. More on the other games I've imported whenever I feel like writing again.

Puzzles and portals... not a crappy D&D mod.

2006-07-19T11:20:39Z

Sorry about the stupid title, but allitteration seemed to work for this one. 2 things have been worthy of posting (keeping to my "my personal life is my own but here's some shit about games and movies" posting habits, of course) lately and they start with the same letter.

First off, since only about half of the people who read this actually give a shit about games, I'll start with the movie news. As happened with A Scanner Darkly, I'm discovering the joy of press screenings. Going to a theater at 10 in the morning with noone else there but a few reporters. The concession stand closed but for a single pot of coffee waiting on the counter. It's really awesome to be able to see a movie on the big screen with this kind of atmosphere. I heard about another screening that happened yesterday morning and decided to wake up early and go to it. The movie turned out to be Wordplay, a documentary following the goings on at an established crossword puzzle tournament that happens every year at the same Marriot hotel. It was started by Will Shortz, who edits the NY Times crossword, and attracts hundereds of people each year. This movie surprised the hell out of me. Between footage from the competition, randomly interspersed interview with Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, and others, and some genuine tension, this manages to make crossword puzzles pretty damn exciting. During the final few scenes of the movie, when the last round of the tournament is taking place, I was almost biting my fingernails. Throughout the movie you're introduced to several of the key competitors and ex-champions and I had a really hard time deciding who I wanted to win. My two favorites were the 20 year old IT major/wunderkind who was the youngest person ever to make it that far in the tournament and the 30-something guy who, at 24, became the youngest person to win the tournament. Admittedly, this guy didn't endear himself to me too much until the clips of his home life when he was playing pinball with his long-time boyfriend. They were so sweet together and it made me really want him to win it.

See? Why the hell do I care this much about a crossword tournament? This should, by all rights, be one of the more boring things I've ever seen. It's not though. It's amazing. Check it out.

Next bit, the game-related one about the portals. Well, Portal actaully. Singular. As in: "This fall, Valve software will be releasing the game Portal." The trailer just got posted online and looks phenomenal. I'm a bit turned off by the art style though, to tell you the truth. Gameplay looks fun and everything, but the levels look like they came straight out of one of the Combine's buildings in Half Life 2. The game was inspired by a game called Narbacular Drop (Don't try to click it right now, as the site has been getting massive traffic since the announcement of Portal and is currently down) which I have to say is a ton of fun. Well, maybe not a ton. It would be a ton if it were a full game though. As it is, it's a project from the Nintendo-sponsored Digipen University that takes about 20 minutes to complete and is free to download and play. Great fun while it lasts, and kudos to Valve for extending it into a full game. Why, though, couldn't they have maintained the art direction present in Narbacular Drop. Very Dungeon Keeper 2-esque graphics are present as you play as the princess Noknees (named for her inability to jump) and have to create portals in the walls, floors and ceilings to solve puzzles. Incredibly creative and the "using magic portals to find your way out of a mountain" thing fits the feel of the gameplay a lot better than "We've created a futuristic portal gun! Have fun in our sterile office-tower like building!" *sigh* Portal is going to be available on Steam by the end of the year, and by the looks of things right now, will definitely be worth the $20 a game that Steam seems to be charging as the standard right now. There's also the possibility that it'll be bundled with the next episode of Half Life 2 (which I'll be buying anyway) so that would really sweeten the deal. I'm really starting to like Steam, as it seems to be encouraging the right kind of games. Darwinia, Portal, and Ragdoll Kung Fu need to be encouraged in their creativity, so good on 'em.

That's it for tonight. It's 5:20 and I need some sleep before work. Or at least, I need to watch and episode of Red Dwarf and then try to sleep. Night night.

Gitaroo Man Live!

2006-07-13T03:13:38Z

Oh the fun. Those of you who had a chance to play Gitaroo Man for the PS2 (I know at least Ozon has a copy...) know just how damn entertaining it can be to fight evil with the power of ROCK! Well, the series just got an extension of sorts in the form of a PSP remake with a bunch of bonus features. As I love love LOVE Gitaroo Man, I quickly imported the game when it came out in Japan. It'll be out in North America in a few months as well, but as the story is the same as the PS2 version and the voiceover quality is much higher in the original Japanese, I decided to go the early-adopter route. I do love my region-free devices. Anyway, I digress. Impressions:

Well, first off: It's fucking GITAROO MAN! This game is genius, and if you never played it on the PS2, you did yourself a great disservice. Luckily, Koei has given you a chance to make up for it, and included some nice new concessions for you as well. Gitaroo Man is a rythm game from the team that more recently brought us the incredible Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! and it's soon to be released North American brother Elite Beat Agents. It revolves around the life of U-1 and his discovery that his dog Puma is a robot, he is really a superhero from another planet, and his schoolyard rival is somehow and intergalactic supervillain. Logically, he must pick up the magical Gitaroo (a guitar/weapon) and do battle. This takes you through 10 levels, each with a different feel and type of music to them. (the giant Reggae shark is a personal favorite) Just look at this scan I took of the cover and tell me it's not happy and amazing.

There. Is that not awesome? Now find it and play it. I'll wait. All done? Ok, so here's how the updated version fares.

Most important among the newness is the addition of two brand new songs. When I first heard about this game, I was dissappointed that they had chosen to remake Gitaroo rather than create a sequel, so the new songs made me feel a little better. At least it's not ALL a rehash, right? Right. Of course, the game is good enough to warrant playing again, but this makes it a bit easier to accept that you've essentially bought the same game twice. Course, the first time I bought it was through eBay, so Koei didn't actually get any of my money. Now I've paid them and that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The songs are good. That's all I really need to say about them. Despite being written by different people than the original soundtrack, they uphold the spirit of the game well.

Of less importance but also very cool is the jukebox mode. A brilliant idea for a portable device, as sometimes you want the music but need your hands for something else. Yes, the entire tracklist of the game is available for you to listen to whenever you want. You do have to unlock tracks by beating their level in the game, but it's a very nice touch. Last but not least is an easier difficulty level, which should come as a relief to a few people. I know if the original had offered one I would have been tempted several times as the last few levels become punishingly difficult. The rewarding feeling you get when you win is worth the effort though, so unless you're totally new to rythm games I wouldn't use it.

Not really an addition to the game but a difference nonetheless, we now have the PSP joypad. Frankly, I prefer it to the PS2. Now that the buttons aren't pressure sensitive anymore you don't need to worry about jamming on the buttons during the battle phase of the songs. They either click or they don't, and it doesn't take much to click them. This gives the control a more solid feel than it had on the PS2 and is very nice.

Worth importing? Well, if you've beaten the PS2 game then you know the story. If you want to play the game again, want the new songs, or just want it on a portable, go for it. When I ordered, Lik-Sang was giving free shipping on it, in which case it's actually cheaper than most domestic PSP games would be in Canadian Dollars. If you don't know the story and would like to, either play the PS2 version first, know Japanese, or wait until the vague Q4 2006 release date for the North American version. As I understand it, this means sometime between the beginning of October and the end of December. No matter how you play it, do so eventually. You'll enjoy it. Trust me.