in a strange twist of fate... my top 2 most anticipated games are both released this week.

GTA IV (duh.)

and

EchoChrome!!!

yup... its hitting PSN today for just ten bones in both PSP and PS3 flavors. i think i'll go for the PSP version. hot damn!

i stumbled through the japanese demo and loved it. i'm sure to get to the fourth level and pull my hair out though.

***

also... looks like we're doing two podcasts today. or something.

***

and!

cd update

Lyrics Born - Whatever dumb title his new album has
David Crowder Band* - Remememedy Deluxe Edition

***

my back was pretty jacked today, so i came home early. watched 'before the devil knows you're dead'. it's good. better in some aspects than i expected and worse in some others. the story is good and its a pleasure to look at (and not just the naked parts), but the acting was... bonkers. i wasnt feeling it. worth a look though. really, the story is great.

i wont spoil it as much as the trailer does, but two brothers rob a jewelry store... their parents jewelry store. the heist goes bad...

***

an mfing spider was just crawling on my ear! how did it even get up there?

hell... now i feel them all over myself. ugh.

I had a dream last night that I played GTAIV. It was a lot like Sly Cooper, but handled like Tony Hawk when you're off your skateboard.

Despite that, I still loved it.

I'm extremely excited about Tuesday.

***

sometimes, you just gotta laugh.

I kicked on the ps3 and logged into the MGS4 beta to see what the url was for the site to make an ID to actually play the game, and i was greeted with ANOTHER update to download.

sony/konami... i though microsoft had a lock on how to eff up highly anticipated online content and how to botch a massive launch. you have proved me wrong. kudos sirs.

Jon
2:37
Kojima just needs to quit making games and make movies
except they would suck

Don
2:38
haha
did he make ANYTHING else?

Jon
2:38
he made like pac-man or some shit

alright... so... this morning i cashed in some Hasting's gift cards when I saw that they had the Collectors Edition of 'Stranglehold' for the PS3 for $40. It comes with 'Hard Boiled' on Blu-Ray, and I figure the resell is good, so I bit. I played the demo about 6 times as I liked it so much, I just heard the game was really short...

I played about 3 hours today and I loved every second of it. It's easily one of the most FUN games I've played in ages. It makes no excuses for what it is, big explosions, bloody bullets and a massive body count, but it's great.

I'm pretty far in I guess, but it's set up really weird. There is a first level, with a boss, and it feels natural. after the level you get a rating and all, then you play the second 'level' for about a million years, it seems to span several levels in one, there is no boss, then all the sudden you are rated... then shortly afterwards you complete the third level, but with a boss, a much harder boss than the first one... so I'm just after that battle... however far in that is.

the scene before the second boss was really hard. you're in a ballroom, with a jazz trio playing, and you battle wave after wave of enemies, while trying to kill the band (as they play on). I kept running out of ammo and health, and kept dying. there were just dozens of waves of villains. it was pretty cool though, you shoot the sax player, boom... no sax, but the drums and bass keep playing.... very cool.

i love it. its just everything i want in a shooter. VERY destructible environments, lots of crap to knock over and jump over and shoot, lots of interactivity in the levels, cool gunplay, very natural controls...

i did a slo-mo 'matrix-ish jump backwards while i was wielding dual pistols shooting at a guy, at the same time i landed on my back on a counter top and instead of sliding off to the floor, or clipping through to the floor like most games, Tequila hit and did a backroll to the floor and took cover. really... just perfect.

you dont dive into the walls and clip and fall. if you dive into a wall, you run up the wall and do a backflip. its a little weird sliding over every flat surface like it were the hood of the General Lee, but it also looks badass, so i'm not complaining.

awesome game.... 50 stars...


***

i also played a little 'skate' today... for the first time in several months. another fantastic game, so relaxing...

Fotini is addicted to "pixelJunk Monsters'! as am i... what a great game. we have been at each others throats everytime we accidently cash out a fortress instead of upgrading it.

we DOMINATED the first Special level. just went bananas with arrow towers. almost the whole map was arrows. i think at the end we had about 5 trees left, and we had at least ten black flags. it was crazy.

THIS is the game i've been looking for for the PS3.

video game post! prepare to be bored.

i made out as quite the cheap ass gamer today... i used a $35 gift card towards 'Assassin's Creed' for the PS3 today, as it was on sale for $38... so that's 3 bucks... BUT i'm pretty sure Hasting's will offer me $35 for it in trade in. so the plan is to blow through it, and flip it.

ALSO... i found a copy of Tony Hawk's Proving Ground Limited Edition for the 360 at target for $14.xx, a great deal in itself... but i already own the old edition. SO... i sold the old version to Hastings for $25.xx... i upgraded, and got a free ten bucks. if anyone wants to do the same, they have a couple copies at the Target on Paseo and I-25. it's ten bucks free basically.

AND... when i was at hastings, i saw that they had a bin of clearance games. my dad was waiting in the car, so i just took a quick look and found Tron 2.0, a game I've been wanting for over a year now, for $4.99... that's about what it runs before shipping on amazon, and if it doesnt work, i'll take it back to hastings and get it new on amazon for 8 bucks.

IN ADDITION... i go up to pay for Tron and the guy tells me that the games in there are 'buy one get one free', though there are no signs indicating as such. so i took a two second look and found some game called 'Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon'. its got an awful name, but it looks a lot like 'indigo Prophecy' (one of my favorite games ever) and i found indigo prophecy in much the same fashion. didnt know anything about it, it looked cool, was cheap used, i jumped and it blew my mind (for the first couple hours before the story went to pot)... so i'm hoping for the same. it got good reviews! so i'm even more surprised that i've never heard of it.

i was talking to the guy at hastings and i said 'yeah it looked like indigo prophecy so i thought i'd give it a shot' and hes like 'YES! thats one of my favorite games (IP i mean)!' so yeah... he's the first IP fan outside of Albedo i've ever met... though i'm sure david would be if he ever tried it! josh borrowed my copy, his brother took it from him and beat it, and josh gave it back having never played it. so yeah. josh lost.

the hastings guy told me that 'Pariah' was a really good game... so i just ordered it online.

Those are the kind of games i really really love. maybe the gameplay isnt 100% spectacular, but the story and mood keep you going. Indigo Prophecy had me glued to my seat just based on the intro video.

on the other side of the coin, i couldnt care less about the story of Tomb Raider, but freaking Legend had such fantastic gameplay that i couldnt put that down. i know it gets knocked a lot, but i LOVED it. maybe i loved it even more than i should have because i didnt expect to like it at all.

***

ASS CRED. i played assassin's creed for a few hours today. you know how the reviews are freaking mixed as hell... thats perfect. my experience was mixed as hell.

here's two points to prove that statement:

1. i fell asleep while playing. literally. i woke up and the game was paused and the controller was about 4 inches past my hands, though my hands were cradled as if i were holding the controller. very weird. but there you go. its gotdamned BORING... fairly often too.

2. the controls are so good i literally laughed at loud at one point because i climbed up and over a building just by moving towards it. i mean... its super natural. some of the best controls i've ever seen ever... though some aspects of the controls are a little dumb, and really make you think, the movements and stuff just WORK.

so yeah... it really is a beautiful mess. its easily EASILY one of the best looking games i've ever played. the dude runs around wonderfully and it just always looks fantastic. but i'm so bored by everything thats going on. even when i finally did get to kill someone, i was trying to be all sneaky and HE WALKED AWAY. boring. i finally just had to sword fight his ass in front of everyone. no thanks.

still... its really pretty... i'm going to keep it up for a little longer... see if it gets better. i really wish the plot had not been spoiled for me before hand. there is a massive twist in the first two seconds of the game. so much so that even fotini was like 'WTF?;... but i already knew about it. i think it really would have knocked me down if it were a surprise.

***

in other gaming news...

did i mention how gotdamned ugly 'Mass Effect' is? why has NO ONE mentioned this? i just assumed it would look great because i had not heard otherwise, but this is some Halo 2 junks right here. halo 2 looked great 4 years ago on a last gen system... this is a BANNER title, and its hideous. even the smoking man from Half LIfe has more going on than this game. some of the faces and environments are ok, but the shading is horrible. they had both film grain and speed blur effects turned on... constantly. it was really distracting so i turned both of them off, but now i know why they're there.... to smooth the edges.

the shadows on everyones faces look like big pixel pyramids... ugh... what happened?

also... its KOTOR. Mass Effect is to KOTOR as apples are to apples. subtract lightsabers and add in glowing forearms. its the same damn thing with a new (poor) coat of paint.

that said, its also pretty fun, the dialog is great, good story so far, and the action isnt bad. i actually kinda care about whats going on.

its glitchy as hell... as per BioWare's MO. i've had to reload twice just because i was stuck to the floor.

***

Viva la bedtime!

I'm actually kinda looking forward to Super Smash Bros Brawl. I was never into the other titles really, but this new one is just jam packed with content, and sounds pretty fun... way to go marketing!

***

hung out with Ryan and Alex for a bit yesterday... we were playing Rock Band and Alex pulled off a freaking hilarious fanboy nod during one of the 'improv' sections of 'Creep' by Radiohead...

he sang 'I wish I was special'... and then improvised 'wait until you hear THE BENDS!'. haha! so he was trying to cheer up Thom Yorke, while doing karaoke to his song. we all laughed our asses off.

they forced me to sing, so i did so, horribly. ryan and alex held their ground though, and ryan even tackled the white boy rap verses of 'Epic' by Faith No More... i was a bit shocked!

Ghost Squad has been proving itself as a crowd pleaser...

***

also, those assholes said my journal has turned to mainly a gaming blog (no argument there) and that it 'hasnt been funny in a long time'.

..................................

it's weird to hear that YOUR LIFE IS BORING i guess. i'm going to have to up the rants and dick jokes i guess. or maybe its that i upped the dick jokes and have been bitching less about work. hmmm... they didnt say exactly what's unfunny, but i dont really try to be funny anymore. not that i really tried before, i mostly just was pissed off and was trying to get all my emotions down on paper or whatever, really really quickly. i guess i'm funnier when i'm pissed a la Lewis Black or Richard Lewis or 50 million other people.

come to think of it. who isnt downright hilarious when they're pissed? unless they're pissed at you.

Ryan also called the reticule a 'little aiming thingy', and when i called him (an english major who studied at oxford or something) on it, he said he had already used reticule and was trying to vary his speech. he then used a word that i havent heard in ages, he'll have to fill me in... but it was a complex word, to combat his 'thingy' drop.

right.

***

ok, back to gaming...

i finally got the themes on PS3 to work, so i downloaded a few. the ATHF one looked a lot better in the preview. the CAG on sucks (for what it is), so Okami it is!

I'm kinda mad at Joystiq... they were talking about picking less obvious titles for their top 10, which doesn't seem like the point, but I get what they were saying, and they went and picked one of my favorites! Which is fine... just unexpected.

( My favorite games of 2007: )

I just played 'Pain' with Mike for over an hour. The same level, just laughing our asses off. Great game for what it is. Just wish it were bloodier.

Traded in 'Uncharted' tonight... did i mention that i finished it this morning? My life is a freaking blur anymore. we havent hung out with anyone in over two weeks. i mean, we kinda did for an hour on friday night, but no one has set foot in our house for a long time. no wait, jason and kelly did after church last week.

i dont know anymore.

***

so i get thursday off, but that meeting is mandatory. no big deal i figure. i'll just shoot in and out and go home.

well, its a four hour meeting on the other side of town. so scratch that.

at least its 4 more hours of OT.

came in early today... going in tomorrow at 5am. those 20 pallets of books showed up today! and damn if thats not a lot of books... it was like half the floor in the dock area. sheesh.

***

The Wii Zapper came today. the thing is pretty uncomfortable, but Links Crossbow Training is really fun. for $20, i can't complain. my hands are just too big to hang with the zapper. the trigger should be on the back grip, not the front.

***

yeah, anyway... when i traded in Uncharted, i rented Call of Duty 4... for the ps3 (gotdamn i miss the 360!). so far, not so impressed. i feel like a little bitch just tagging along with a giant squad of soldiers. being an assassinated president was kinda cool.

the story and levels seem neat, but the controls are nothing special. i dont understand why everyone is jizzing all over themselves for the game. Rainbow Six Vegas nailed what tactical shooters should feel like. even Gears did a great job. this just feels... off. but i'm only 2 missions in.

better get to bed... i'm 36 minutes late.

Used a $10 off coupon, and the $25 gift card that came with Galaxy to pick up Rock Band tonight for $25! No, I did not get the huge set with all the instruments. I just got the disc. Sadly, I have no 360 to play it on yet, but that's ok. The coupon expires on Wednesday, so I had to get on the stick. Can't wait to play it! I messed with the demo tonight at Best Buy... The guitar is nice, but very different. I couldn't get my hands in the right place. I don't really like the strum bar, its too loose, but everything else about the guitar is very nice. its thin, has lots of buttons, etc.

***

Played a lot more of 'Uncharted' in the past few days. I think I'm about done with it. I think I hit the major spoiler section that Wombat is complaining about. I haven't read his rant yet, but I'm guessing I got there... I really loved the game until this certain element showed up. Now its getting old FAST. Which sucks, because I was really thinking about playing through a second time.

I've unlocked a ton of rewards. 100 headshots, shooting from the hip, treasure legend or something... very cool... every game, including 360 games, should not only have achievements, but rather should have awesome bonuses that unlock when you do great things, or crazy things in the game. Ratchet and Clank has it, Metroid 3 has it, meaningless points just ain't cutting it anymore.

EDIT

I'm on level 20 of 22...

***

worked a little over six hours today. i had thursday off, and last sunday. i'm not sure when my next day off will be, i have to go to church next sunday for sure, so that'll be a half-day at most. I have thursday off, but there is a big meeting at work, so i think i'll go, if only for the meeting. tomorrow i'm going in early. Opening a freaking store is a mess! lots of work, but its very rewarding. and getting overtime pay is something i really dig. my last job i didnt care enough to put in any overtime, if there was such a thing, and the job before that i put in a ton of overtime, but was rarely compensated for it. this job is sweet. you get OT pay after 8 hours, and after 40 hours. i work over 8 hours every day, even if its just a little, and today was all OT. sweeeet. if i really do just keep working without a day off for the next 2 weeks, i'll be banking it something fierce.

***

we got off work at 4pm today, 2 hours early. i went straight from work to buy a christmas tree, then home, bolted it upright, and left the house again to get Rock Band and dinner, home around 7, just like a normal workday.

oh... and picked up

Gorillaz - D-Sides

im up freaking late. bedtime.

Poll #1092553
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Reese Witheredspoon

***

Traded in 'Ratchet and Clank' for 'Uncharted'... so far its pretty good. looks fantastic, and has some interesting story elements that i wasnt expecting. The three main characters are pretty cool so far too... It's a bit linear for that type of game, but then maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. I did find a couple treasures just by following hunches. good stuff.

***

EDIT

another sexy Ween song that I've been digging... those lyrics crack me up...

Poll #1081577
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Sarah Jessica Parker

***

I guess I haven't written much in the past few months. I just haven't felt especially inspired.

***

CDs...

Saul Williams - Niggy Tardust
Lyrycyst - Masquerade
Demon Hunter - Storm the Gates of Hell
Nick Swardson - Party
Jinny Kim - Finding Ophelia
Waterdeep - Live at the New Earth
Chris Rice - Peace Like a River
Enter the Worship Circle - Village Thrift
Coheed and Cambria - something something something something part something
Some other crap I'm sure.
El Ten Eleven - both records
Sara Groves - Tell Me What You Did With My Baby Or I'll Cut You.

***

GripShift = fun times ten.

***

I had a dream last night. Jon was back (already!) and it was our class reunion, but we only reunited with the assholes from school, not any cool kids. At the same time, all of our friends NOW (like David and Tamara and Robert and Justin and whatnot) were having a get together and they didn't want us to hang out with our old classmates. David and I kept talking about some sort of NES emulator that just came out that we both picked up. We were playing really awful games on it, but thought they were great because of the memories we had of them back when they were considered to be 'good'.

Jon's gone and wouldn't you know it? The BSG Live Arcade game hits this week. It looks like hellass.

***

Ratchet and Clank comes out this week... the same week the 80G PS3 receives a $100 price drop... coincidence? I'm going to check now, and if there are more than $561 dollars in my bank account its going to be a seriously LONG week.

So we went to this place called Punk Rock Pizza yesterday for lunch... the food was great, the place was cool and the service was good. So, I was a little surprised to hear 'Arms Wide Open' by Creed followed by Christina Aguilera while we were waiting for our food... when the lady came by our table, I asked her if we were listening to her punk rock mixtape. She then put on some real punk rock. and it was good.

***

also... i wanted to write something else amusing, but i forget what it was...

***

and finally, of the 50 people invited, only matt and tamara officially rsvp'ed (though the garcias and 2 of the kelleys confirmed that they were not coming)to come to the McCalls corn maze thing this year. the other 44 people were up in the air, or never responded. which is all fine and good (though a little lame), so we drive all the way out to moriarity and there are people everywhere!!! wtf!!!??? its usually DEAD, but it was jammed packed. there was a line at least 100 people deep just for tickets, then lines several 100's of people deep to get to each attraction. we then drove all the way back to corrales and went to their corn maze. there were about 8 other people there... period. and you know what? their maze was just as good! the actual maze anyway. they didnt have any crazies with chainsaws chasing us around, but the maze was really good! we took the time to find all the checkpoints, and afterwards, we did the maze in reverse. good times.

***

also... i'm currently faced with one of the greatest gaming cheap ass deals i've ever encountered. i'm not sure i'm man enough to turn it down, or to take them up on it. the heart says yes, but the knees say no...

***

now to bed.

I had a dream last night that I purchased a PS3. and it was good.

Last night I dreamed that I purchased a PS3. It was the greatest moment of my life. Also, Dion's burned to the ground and it was Adam's fault. It was the second greatest moment of my life.

The PS3 purchase was so significant that everyone I ever met (pretty much literally) showed up at my house to check it out. My house was of course the E3 conference (or what my mind imagines it would be from photographs), it was filled with huge, wonderful, video game displays. There was a large buffet. I didn't have room near my TV for the PS3, so I put it right on top of my Wii and the Wii was instantly crushed under the massive size of the PS3. My dad was mad at me for wasting so much money, but then I showed him the hydraulics that the PS3 came with and had it run some yankee-yankee-side-to-side action and he calmed down. Yes, my PS3 came tricked out.

The number one reason I was excited about the PS3 was for it's version of the Live Arcade. I could now download all the critically panned exclusive arcade titles and PSOne games I wanted.

Again, it was the greatest moment of my life. For the past seven months I couldn't have cared less about the PS3, but I woke up this morning excited at what the future holds for the PS3 and my possible future relationship with it.

***

Also, I played 'Puzzle Quest' pretty much every.single.free moment I had yesterday, and it was wonderful.

I was reading LJ entries from 5 years ago... and i found this quote that I posted. I really wish i had posted the article link as well! its even more interesting now.

"in that future, there would be no such thing as PS3. No particular boxes called PS3,
or no particular format called PS3. The medium for PS One was CD-
ROMs. Medium for PS2 is DVDs. But once you get connected to the
Internet, there's no boundaries based on physical constraint. The
Internet is the medium. In the world of the Internet and, unlike CDs
or DVDs, there's no sense of capacity. And it will continue to
evolve."

- Ken Kuturagi

No sense of capacity? I see what's he's saying, but there's only so many arcade titles and demos and songs that will fit on a 20gig hard drive. (or for song, a 60gig). i wish he were right. i'd love to have a 120gig HD on the 360. i know the modded ones have huge hard drives, but i never got into modding. my friend jason has about a dozen xbox games, and every single SNES, NES, Genesis, Mega Drive, TG16, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, etc. game on his modded xbox. its wonderful.

Weird huh? maybe Kuturagi will give me $1200 dollars for each PS3 that I can prove exists!

Soooooooooooo.

I played the PS3 this morning. Target had a demo set up, and no one was around at 9am, oddly.

I played some basketball game, and it was ok. Pretty, but everything was a bit too shiny. I got bored with that and walked away. about a half-hour later i wandered back over to it and it was playing some demo video. i then found the interface and was able to try MotorStorm. Again, it was pretty, but the gameplay wasnt anything special. in fact, the truck felt really floaty and slow. the level was pretty well designed though. i dug it. i paused it to quit when i noticed an option that said something like "turn motion sensor on". so i turned it on. then i was able to move the sixaxis from left to right like a steering wheel to steer. that made it actually a lot easier to control. and a lot more fun. so in a sense, i just had my first taste of the Wii hands on. sweeeeet.

i also saw my first Wii today. it was a demo unit, under glass, not even plugged in. it is really small, but not as small as i had imagined. i dont know what i expected... (i've had 3 DVD cases - the size of the Wii overall - in my gaming station area for about 2 months now in anticipation), but its definitely bigger.

We listened to a TON of podcasts today... and I received an ear-full of 'Gears of War'. it sounds like THE greatest game of the year hands down, the way everyone is talking. Wish it would show up! and wombat had a good point, Nintendo has not hyped the new Zelda AT ALL. This is THE BIGGEST FRANCHISE IN ALL OF VIDEOGAMES and no one is talking about it. freaking weird.