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Bass Groove

Gaming

When it comes to most games, I’m a team player.  I disliked Quake Deathmatch, but I was obsessed with Team Fortress.  So, I wasn’t surprised at all when I finally picked up a Guitar Hero controller a couple of years ago that I really enjoyed playing the “second fiddle” rather than the lead guitar.  When Rock Band came out, while I did thoroughly enjoy playing guitar, the fact is that I enjoyed taking up the bass in a band on tour much more.  A little thing that makes me enjoy online play a bit more since everyone else in the world seems to want to play guitar.

Rock Band 2 came out this past Sunday, and having pre-ordered it a while back, I went and picked up my copy.  The game is great.  Its like Rock Band, only better… sort of.

The one drawback to the new game is that there is no straight tiered solo playlist.  You can’t just get in and play down the list to unlock songs.  To unlock songs you need to either have two people and do the challenges, or you play by yourself in a band on the tour mode.  Basically, its the old multiplayer tour, but playable by one person.  The drawback is that like the old multiplayer mode, you end up playing the same songs over and over in sets until you unlock more… well, unless you owned Rock Band 1 and a bunch of Down Loaded Content (DLC), because then you can choose from any previous song.  All your RB1 favorites and all the songs you paid extra for, right from day one.  Functionally, the single player mode works like the original game, but the presentation makes it feel different.

The advantage to this system, is that as a single player, I can play bass as my method of choice going through the tour and unlocking songs.  And that totally rocks.

Death Masks

Reviews

Oh, it should be no surprise by now that I like the Dresden books.  And the fifth book in the series is no different.  Death Masks picks up a little while after book four, the Red Court is still calling for Dresden’s blood and someone has stolen the Shroud of Turin.

Like all the other books, the book begins with a bang, then spends a few chapters laying out the framework, and then the real action begins.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.  I recommend it.

Zombie Day at the Mall

Random Thoughts

It has been a while since I posted something for Zombie Wednesdays, and I hope with this post I am beginning a trend of doing so.

I am, by all accounts, a t-shirt and jeans sort of guy.  T-shirt and shorts in the summer.  I really don’t like dressing up nice because I find most “nice” clothes to be uncomfortable, especially anything with a tie.  Wearing a tie is like voluntarily placing a noose around your neck… but I digress…

Knowing my love for zombies, and probably suspecting my love for t-shirts, a friend of mine sent me a link to this:

Zombie Day at the Mall t-shirt @ SplitReason.com
Zombie Day at the Mall t-shirt design @ © SplitReason.com

And that is just all kinds of awesome.  As soon as I find a spare twenty bucks, that beauty will be on its way to my door.

Mafia Matrix: My Final Review

Gaming

My character is dead.  Poor guy.  All he wanted was to see a little justice, but there is none in Mafia Matrix.  The tag line for this game is a lie.  “Rise above the law, or become the law” it says, but realistically, you have no choice.  In this game, you are either a gangster clawing for power or bowing down to those in charge, or you are in the legit careers.  As a legitimate businessperson in Mafia Matrix, you are little more than an ATM for the gangsters.  You earn money by working your job, investing at the bank, and keeping the world running (the cities are designed to fail if all the legitimate careers are not manned).  Meanwhile, the gangsters will mug you, rob your house, steal your car, hack your bank, or set your businesses on fire.  Every city in the game runs on intimidation and fear.  If you want to stay legit, expect to rotate through jobs on a weekly basis, because no one will let you stay anywhere for very long, they want to keep the cows moving, churning through the careers and making cash, and most of all remaining unimportant.  Why, you wouldn’t want a mayor or a police chief to have any power at all… instead, anyone who sits in a seat of power longer than authorized will log in dead.

I tried to enjoy the game.  I kept telling myself the next career would be the one that would click.  But every time I began enjoying the game, someone would come along and tell me to move on or die.  Every career, in that light, became pointless.  If you weren’t using them as a road stop to gangster-hood, there was no point.  So in the end I finally gave in, stopped trying to be legit, and headed down the path of the hood.  Of course, it wasn’t long before I crossed the wrong person and was whacked for my troubles.  Okay, it might have been my fault… I mean, after spending months being an ATM for gangsters, I decided to put my foot down.  I got a face full of buckshot in return.

After much playing, in the end, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.  It is a giant pile of flawed garbage that is labor intensive with very little enjoyment or reward.  Do yourself a favor and stay out of the Mafia Matrix.

Chrome

Random Thoughts

In case you have been living under a rock, Internet-wise that is, Google released a beta of their new web browser called Chrome.

I’ve been playing with it, and my official review is that I love it.  Its fast, and when a web page does lock up for some reason being able to kill just that one page without killing all my web pages is really nice.  Of course, being a beta, it still has flaws.  There is no integration with many of Google’s other tools (I’m a big user of Google Bookmarks, and while I can use the web page I would prefer to have my bookmarks available in browser), and various plug-ins don’t function (if you use any Cold Fusion web sites that make use of the database table grid tool thing, it doesn’t work).  But I am sure many of those will come in time.

However, playing with chrome introduced me to another thing which had previously been available but I have never used and that is using a single link to read my RSS feeds from my Google Reader.  I have subscriptions to 87 RSS Feeds, and its only growing.  Now, up in my bookmark bar in Chrome, I have a link that says “Next»” and when I click it, my browser navigates to the next unread RSS entry, or rather to the page of that RSS entry.  Now, when I find myself with a few minutes to spare between work items, I just click the Next link and start making my way through my RSS feeds one article at a time.  It really is quite nice.

Another really nice feature is the adaptive search engine capabilities.  Essentially, any website that uses a search where the search terms are in the URL (not passed as session or cookie values), Chrome will parse the URL and add it as a search engine.  When you start typing in a URL and you have enough characters to correctly identify the page (i.e. – it shows as the first option to select in the suggestions under where you are typing), hit Tab.  This will change the URL bar into a Search Bar for the selected web site.  Enter in your search terms and hit enter and Chrome will submit the search as if you had gone to the site and entered your terms into their search field.

And it works with any web site as long as you have performed one search on it.  If you have Chrome, search for something on my blog.  Anything.  Now, go back to the URL, type in “weblog” (or whatever you need to type to make my web site the first suggested option) and hit Tab.  Now type in a search term and hit enter.  You should get back a page of search results.  This kind of thing is fairly nifty as long as you have searched the site before.  Like, if I know that Scott over at BrokenToys.org has written about Hello Kitty before and I want to find it, I would just type in “bro”, hit Tab, then type “Hello Kitty” and press enter.  Bam.  Search results!

Overall, I’m really looking forward to more improvements being made to Chrome.  They have a great start going, and I am optomistic that it can only get better from here.

Dragon*Con 2008: Day Four

Dragon*Con

The last day of Con is always the worst.  First, because it comes after the last night of Con, which is usually filled with too much drinking and staying up way too late.  Then there is the packing in order to check out before getting dinged for another day stay.  And as bad as you feel, any panelists feel worse, because not only do they have the same issues you do, but they also have to be on panels.  The last day of Con is always the slowest.

After getting the car packed and heading back in, I made another trip through the dealer and exhibitor rooms.  After a few days of saying there was nothing worth seeing you might wonder why I would go back… well, being the last day, many sellers weigh the expense of hauling back product versus cutting the price.  So, its no surprise on Monday at Dragon*Con to see 20%… 50%… or higher signs.  See, if you buy early, you pay more, but you will get your item.  If you wait, you might pay less, or you might be too late.  I found a stall selling RPG materials, all items $2, so I picked up random curiosities, like the Starship Troopers pen and paper game.  I wouldn’t pay the normal price, but for $2?  Hells yeah!

Then it was off to the panels… Free MMOs was up first.  There are lots, most of them look like crap (to me, anything anime is crap, I hate that style, all asian MMOs, free or not free, are boring soulless garbage), but some don’t.

And the pen and paper game Aftermath! has been licensed for an MMO.  I heart the apocalypse, so I hope they succeed.

With those last panels out of the way, it was time to head home and sleep…

Dragon*Con 2008: Day Three

Dragon*Con

I recommend, if you come to Con, plan at least one morning to eat breakfast at Sear, one of the restaurants in the Marriott. Yes, its expensive at $22 for the breakfast buffet, but it is the best buffet ever. Worth every penny, in my opinion.

And what does one do after a hearty breakfast? Why, you watch a post-apocalyptic movie, that’s what! 20 Years After is about people living in a world after nuclear war. Its not a big action film and it doesn’t have mutants or zombies or anything. Just people, some who are crazy, trying to get by. It wasn’t a great film, but for a low budget indie film, it was pretty good. The Q&A with the guys who made it was decent too.

The best thing in the world about Star Wars trivia… is the heckling and sarcasm.

The best thing in the world about the Masquerade, the Con’s big costume contest… is the heckling and sarcasm.

And again, one of the things that makes the Con, are the parties. A few years back, a friend, Wade, couldn’t make the Con, so a hand and rod puppet of him was made to attend in his place. Puppet Wade was very popular with the ladies. This year, Puppet Wade made a comeback. He donned a pirate hat and a condom patch, and he was again popular with the ladies. The Pirate Party was great, as was the wandering around and meeting strangers.

Puppets rule.

Dragon*Con 2008: Day Two

Dragon*Con

A better day of panels… I got to see SOE demonstrate FreeRealms, which, in the simplest terms, is Puzzle Pirates on steroids and crossing genres.  It definitely is something I am going to look into, and at the price (free), why not?

Force of Arms, a mechanized armor fighting MMO being built on the Multiverse system, has a lot of potential.  However, right now, potential seems to be what it has the most of, and everything about the actual game play seems to not be nailed down just yet.

On the other hand, Champions Online, looks like it is going to be City of Heroes squared… at least.  The two gents who showed off the game left me feeling really good about this one.

I took some time to go through the dealers’ and exhibitors’ halls… and it was pretty much the same.  The same dealers with the same stuff for sale, the same exhibitors with the same products.  Oh, there were some new items here and there, but nothing really to blow one’s shirt up.

And then the nightlife began.

The planned events by the Con were fairly normal… and like normal they were hum-drum.  The Colonial Fleet party for Battlestar Galactica was alright, with it’s 80’s soundtrack… it got better when some of the cast showed up.  The Shindig for Firefly was boring.  But later in the evening, the BSG fans had a party of their own on the 10th floor of the Marriott, and those cats know how to throw down.

Yeah, the day is for panels, but the night belongs to the parties… its what the Con is all about.  It would be a shame if they ever tried to move to a convention center and lost the hotel party nightlife.

Dragon*Con 2008: Day One

Dragon*Con

One of the things I enjoy most about Con are the panels.  Yeah, the costumes and parties are cool and all that, but I also come for the panels.  In a good, well run panel, you can actually learn quite a bit, participate in discussions and meet people with similar interests.  In a poorly run panel, the only thing you learn is that there is a reason for having a moderator who actually cares about the subject at hand.

I’m not going to point any fingers and name names, but many of the panels I went to today were not well run at all.  People asking stupid questions, panelist meandering through unrelated subjects, entire topics being misunderstood and abandoned…  Not a good day at the con at all.

But then came the drinking and the people watching, which is always fun.

To cap off the night, the wife and I decided to duck into a concert.  99% of live performances by bands are not intended for people who like lyrics and don’t already know the songs by heart.  The music is cranked so loud that the only thing you know for sure about the words is that the song does have lyrics, and sometimes you can make out the tones, but actual phrases are lost beneath the thrumming beat and the wailing guitars.

Oh well… there’s always drinking and people watching…

Hamlet 2

Random Thoughts

7 out of 13 nots.
for being fun and funny, but not overflowing with either

Hamlet 2 is a twist on a story that has been done before.  The school is going to shut down the drama program and the teacher and his students have one last shot to put on a play that will save everything.  Only, this teacher is a buffoon, and the play he decides to do is an original work, a sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where Jesus returns to the world, and then travels through time with Hamlet allowing him to save all the people who die in the original play.  The production is punctuated with songs like “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” and “Raped In The Face” making the play in the movie is more fun than the movie itself for its absurdity.

If you are a huge South Park fan and live for that style of humor, then run right out and see Hamlet 2.  You’ll love it.  But if South Park isn’t your heart and soul, then you may want to pass on this one, or at least see it at a discounted rate.