miffy495

Um... your site seems broken at the moment. From the name of the url, I'm guessing you got the Expert achievement, but what's up with the pedal? ...also, my kit came. Guitar broke after 2 days which is a shame because it felt great. Haven't tried that 10 minute fix thing yet, will probably do so soon. Have beaten the drum thing on medium, only 3 songs left to 5 star on that difficulty level. Very, very fun. I'm getting the hang of kicking fairly quickly, but it's still taking me a while to get certain songs down. Enter Sandman's intro drove me nuts, but I think I've got it now. Haven't tried anything on Hard yet, so that's the next goal. Damn. So good. Need to fix my guitar so I can use the high buttons for solos again. That was damn fun while it lasted.

Man, I remember talking with a friend over the summer and he was saying that he bet he could name a game that I haven't played. See, he doesn't play much, but has a good 7 years on me and played a lot back when he was younger. Given that I'm 20 and was very young when Loom came out, he thought he could best me. Turns out that I'm the only other person he's ever found who's actually played the game. I recently burned him a copy for Christmas, as he'd been talking about wanting to give it another shot but having no idea how to find it. Happy times, and a great game. I played it about 8 years ago now, but only remember good things about it. I should probably fire it up again sometime soon.

I empathize, Marek. I too got struck with quite a severe case of the lurgi. (If you don't know what that is, find some of Peter Sellers' early work.) Bad enough that I passed out during Christmas dinner with the family. Whee! Went to bed for real around 9:30 and woke up only a little bit late for work the next day. The day leading up to that was nice enough though, what with family and fun stupid gifts (my mom's boyfriend got me one of those shirts that has an equalizer on it. Great for when playing Rock Band.) to play around with. Boxing day was actually far better, because on getting off work I went for sushi with the girl, we went to see Juno (pretty good, but tries waaaay too hard to be indie. Do we really need a Sonic Youth reference every other scene?) and then did a private gift swap between the two of us. Very nice night. Now I'm home from another day of work and hitting the sack before going for tea tomorrow with a friend who just had a first date with someone she met through me and getting a debriefing on this potential hooking up of two good friends of mine. Despite the lurgi, it's been a very nice holiday.

I'm always hesitant to ressurrect a thread like this, but I just got AC under the tree today. I gotta say, I was expecting not much, and I'm completely smitten with this game now. Entering Damascus and just looking around and doing random things was wonderous, and it wasn't until I'd wandered for an hour and a half that I realized I was fulfilling mission requirements while I was doing it. I'd just stumble upon someone and do what I thought should be done in that situation, before I knew it I'd worked my way up to the main assassination. So much fun, and I think this is the prettiest game I've seen yet. All the games praised for their graphics that I've played over the past few months are being trumped by watching the shadows cast from the trees play over citizens walking around a completely believable city. So good. I'll be blitzing this one and hopefully completing it before the winter term starts up on the 14th. So yeah, not the best game ever, or even of the year, but I'd say that if you want to see a series of amazingly rendered cities with beautiful animation, really satisfying swordplay and a ton of side-objectives, check it out soon. I wouldn't have bought it for myself, but now that I have it I'm amazed at how easily I could have skipped this one given my reaction to the mixed reviews. The missions may not be so good, but they make up a remarkably small chunk of the actual game, so in a move that's not really like me at all, I'm actually willing to let that pass.

Well, I woke up today feeling utter shit, have been hacking up a lung all day and got a call from work at 4:30 this evening telling me that (despite it not being on the schedule) I'd been put on for this evening's shift. Naturally, I said that no one had told me early enough in advance and they could bugger off, but that didn't help my mood all that much. Still quite happy though. Got everything I needed to pick up for people and hopefully this cold will pass before New Year's. I can cough a bit around the tree with my family, but I want to feel better when the time comes to party.

Interesting imagery. Anyway, it's now fifteen minutes to Christmas for me, so happy whatever everybody.

Still 4 in the morning on the 24th here. And I have to try and pick something up tomorrow afternoon. Ugh.

My full (drum kit and all) Rock Band kit arrived yesterday, and since then I've been at my mum's house playing with her, her boyfriend, my girlfriend, my sister, her boyfriend, and my grandmother all rotating on instruments and having fun. Everyone is here, everyone is playing together and laughing a bunch. I'm a little anxious about what the girl and my sister think of the things I got them, as I'm not the best at buying for the opposite gender, but I think I'll do fine. Life is good. And drinking heavily is good too. I just turned 20 on Wednesday and the party was massive (filled up the whole bar!) and incredibly fun. Nothing like a huge birthday party to kill off some stress.

I guess it depends on what you thought of Payne 1. It's the same thing with some new fun plot twists, a love interest, and a much bigger budget for shiny goodness. Seeing as I loved Max Payne going into 2, I was blown away. All the people who complained about heavy-handed crappiness in Payne were just as unhappy with the sequel, all the people who were into the over-the-top noir goodness (like myself) loved it.

Ho. Ly. Fuck. That is so damned cool.

Will someone please explain to me why Duke Nukem is a stronger property than Max Payne? I've been wanting to see Max Payne 3 for ages!

My god I want that smiley. Please please please, mods.

I always kind of stand by my conclusion that they're incredibly pretty films, but not incredibly good ones.

Working at a movie theater, we got promotional materials from the distributor despite the fact that we didn't get the movie (not really art house fare). These materials seemed to imply that they were having a huge contest between cinemas to see who could pimp out the movie most, so unless everyone ignored that I'm not sure where you're coming from.

Nah, that's more like Hitler sonar. Not that that's really all that less useful or anything, just not really what we're looking for. ...Actually, I may grab Hitler sonar as well. Can't hurt to be able to hear him coming.

Duke is Jesus? Should we expect release around Easter?

That's pretty much all Heavy Rain will ever be to me. If I hear the name, I picture that face. It's possible the game would be good enough to shake that, but it'd have to be really damn good.

This is your evidence that Britney was hot? I'm sorry, but speaking as a heterosexual male, I have to say: FAIL. And to Nachimir's link, if I move my mouse back and forth over the picture, it looks like her entire head is breathing!

Well then sir, a "happy birthday" is in order!

I'd go to a pub to see Dance Me Pregnant play...

OK, so using rather shady methods (I opened a US based live shell account, bought some American MS points off a website, and went onto the US live store) I bought a bunch of tracks for Rock Band. As my roommates were trying to sleep, I only got to try out a few of them, but here are some quick impressions. Fortunate Son I had been looking forward to immensely. Love that song. Turns out it's really easy. As in, I got a full combo on my first time through. Easy does not negate the awesome though, and I look forward to belting out the vocals on it soon. War Pigs and Synchronicity II I really wanted to play as those songs had been in earlier Guitar Hero games (II and 80s, respectively) and I wanted to see if/how Harmonix had changed the note charts. Synchronicity II is about a bajillion times more fun in RB than it was in GH 80s, thanks to a completely redone note progression and changing a long section that used to bugger my strumming arm up into a long section of hammers and pulls. War Pigs is give and take. I think the singer in GHII was a bit better (this one is also a cover) but when there's an actual singer doing their thing I can't see it mattering that much. Still, for solo guitar play, it's noticeable. The song has been made harder on the regular progressions, but easier (not much in either case) on the solo, so the guitar is give and take here. Both will be played a lot over the coming weeks. I always sang along to War Pigs when I was playing GHII anyway, so I'm used to the "play and sing simultaneously" thing for that song. Last one I played was Jukebox Hero just for the sheer hell of it. Fun song once it gets going, but there are a lot of periods of standing around. I can't see myself playing this one solo a lot, but it seems like it would be great for band work, as someone would always be doing something awesome.

The only reason I'm not playing this game right now is that my birthday is in three days and christmas right after it. I try to not buy anything new for about a month before that just in case. Otherwise, goddamn I'm looking forward to digging into this game.

Damn, condolences man. Good luck with whatever process Steam uses for making your account yours again.

Oh, I'm fully aware. I have no problem being a geek. She knew that I'm ranked in the top 2500 GH players a long time ago, simply because she asked. As I said, all the mocking was good natured. If it wasn't, I could easily shoot back with references to her massive anime collection. Everyone's a bit geeky, right? Still, there is a difference between being a geek and having no life whatsoever. Another thing that I'm forced to admit is that my GH skills developed because my first year of University I was a complete lonely shut-in and they are now the best evidence of a year of my life I'd rather forget. I'm proud of being a geek, it's the recovering hermit status that I'm wary of advertising, thus the nerves over people seeing me play.

The girl was over tonight and her curiosity finally got the better of her. Didn't hurt that her best friend is also a Guitar Hero addict, and that the majority of Rock Band's playlist reads like her CD collection, so when she noticed the game sitting on the coffee table, she asked if she could give it a go. I was actually a bit nervous. My way-too-much-play skills at GH/RB are a point of pride when I'm hanging out with my geekier friends, but tend to get a lot of good natured jokes at my expense around other groups. She knew I played a lot of the game, but actually watching someone shred through Expert solos is different, and I began to brace myself for the evening of mockery to follow. Luckily, she loved it. We got started by making her a character. In most games, this would be difficult. Thing is, she has a bright blue mohawk. This is not something most games are willing to easily recreate. She gave up when she played Warioware and just made a short-haired blonde Mii to play with, which was what she had before deciding to dye and style it. Rock Band was very accomodating for her style though, and immediately you could tell it had made a good impression. Then we got started playing. Another fact about her that comes in handy here, she plays the bass for real. Given that I play guitar as well, we just selected our natural instruments and had at it. She started on easy, got a feel for it, and moved up to medium. By the end of the night she was getting high 90s for notes hit, but we'd been drinking so she was afraid to move up to hard while not in possession of her full coordination. She was having a great time all the way though, and we ended up singing along to quite a few just for the hell of it. Long story short, I don't think I'll be elbowed in the ribs jokingly anymore whenever someone in the general area mentions Guitar Hero. I somehow doubt though that the re-physiqued Judy Nails in GHIII would have been quite as much of a hit as getting herself onstage with her own instrument. Now I know that the next time her best friend and I gang up on her and try to make her play Guitar Hero and watch westerns with us she'll be quite a bit more receptive to the idea. And now that she's discovered she likes it, she can't make fun of my rhythm game addiction anymore. I declare victory in this round! I have now shown the joy of rhythm games to everyone from my already gaming little sister to my girlfriend to my grandmother, (Grandma even went out and found herself a Wii for Wii Sports and GHIII) and not a single one has walked away from it unimpressed.