"Day 7"

Happiness Level: 7 of 10

Other than being super tired from lack of sleep, I felt OK today.

I had grilled chicken fajitas with corn tortillas and a coke for lunch. Here's the thing with the soda: tap water tastes like shit. I'm having a *hard* time drinking tap water from restaurants, and I'm pretty much saying 'fuck it' from now own to having to drink water at restaurants. If the tap water sucks, I'm not drinking it. I'm having a soda or a lemonade or something instead. Honestly, I've never been a huge soda/cola guy, anyway. I have some with my meals, but I hardly ever have a soda outside of that. When I'm really thirsty, I'd much rather have purified drinking water. Sodas are too damn sweet. Too bad I can't stand diet sodas at all. They're worse than tap water.

Speaking of water... I'm finding that purified drinking water like Aquafina or Dasani tastes waaay better than spring water like Ozarka or any of those 'bottled from the natural spring of [insert exotic location here]' bullshit waters. You know what that makes me think of?... that natural spring claim?... Fish shit. All I can think of is fish shitting in that natural spring and then it going right into my $1.50 bottle of water. Fucking gross.

And here's another revelation I've had: jogging on poker nights is nigh impossible. Well, of course its possible, but it's highly improbable. I get out of work at 5:30pm or so. We go pick up Maddie at 5:45pm. Head straight to dinner at around 6:00pm. After I eat, I'm not exercising for at least 2 hours... and that puts us at 8:00pm when poker starts. Poker goes until 12:00-1:00am and then there's no way I'm jogging because I'm too tired. I *HAVE* to jog on M/W/S/S's when there isn't any poker.

I have an appointment to see my family doctor tomorrow. The heart palpitation crap was getting to be too much. Of course, since now the appointment has been made, I'm feeling no more palpitations. Not that I'm complaining. I hate palpipations, and you should too! In any case, I need to get my cholestorol checked and get a new prescription for my cholestorl medication. I suspect that I'll also end up with a referral to my cardiologist. Ya hear that? *My* cardiologist. How many people have a cardiologist that they see regularly enough to call them 'my cardiologist'? Probably not too many outside of those that have had heart attacks. I'm being safe. I'm thinking I just might go ahead and have that ablation done to my extra nerve ending in my heart so that it doesn't randomly start beating at 200bpm for no good reason. Sounds scary, but he's told me before that he's done over 1,000 of them with 100% success rate. Can't ask for better odds than that, right?

I didn't read to Maddie tonite nor did I spend much time with her. That kind of sucked. I plan to take her to a play park this weekend.

Didn't talk to my mom today.

Oh, I forgot about dinner. We went to Logan's. I shared a chopped steak, grilled veggies and a baked potato with Claire. Super exciting, huh?

Poker went alright I guess. I made a lousy $1.90. Wow. I probably played about 25% of my hands. I was playing really tight because the Spurs game was on, and I was more interested in watching the game than playing crap like KTo to a raise. Being selective pre-flop didn't help much. When I did go in with great starting cards, I'd miss horribly and had to fold or get sucked out on. The one time I had KK, I ended up all-in vs. Hanley's QQ which naturally hit another Q on the river. I also had a nice triple club flop while holding 2c 3c. I raised and re-raised on the flop and turn and then proceeded to lose to a K high flush after a 4th club came on the river.

My biggest winning hands were two suckout hands. On a pre-flop all-in, I held AQ vs Pat's AK. I hit a Q while he missing completely. That was very early on and for little money. Later in the evening, I hit a flush draw on the turn after I pushed all in with the nut flush draw on a seemingly crap flop. Claire was the victim that time as she had flopped a set of 7's.

I guess I'll have to make it up at Friday's tourney at Mike's.

"Day 6"

Happiness Level: 4 of 10

I've been feeling those weird heart flutters (palpitations) for the last couple of days. It's been worrying me. I keep thinking that they are going to lead to a WPW episode... which are always really sucky and scary. I'm set up to see the Doctor on Friday. It pretty much overshadowed the raise I got at work today (it was a small one, but a raise nonetheless.)

Don't feel like writing much today. I'll just sum up:

Lunch: Fried Chicken, small fries, water (Made me feel like crap.)
Dinner: Mr Gattis buffet. Modest salad and some pizza/pasta. (Felt more crappy.)
Snacks: None

Exercise: The big zilcher. Aaron came over to play some Shadowrun after dinner and then I spent time with Maddie and then it was bedtime. :-(

Communication: Talked to my mom for a bit. She called me. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of dinner so we didn't talk too long. She and my dad have a pretty bad cold right now. :-(

Sleeping Schedule: I've been totally ignoring this. I actually forgot that I had made some restrictions regarding bedtime. Last night I probably would have been OK, except that my heart palpitations have been getting worse, and that kept me up until about 5:45am. :-( I'm soo tired.

Temper: I got pretty upset because I didn't get to exercise again, and I actually really wanted to this time. I got pissed because Claire fell asleep super early which meant I had to watch Maddie (who's been refusing to go beddy bye at a decent hour) during the time I wanted to go jogging. You might say that it was actually still my fault because I could have gone jogging in the early evening, but you'd be wrong because I can't run/jog/exercise for at least 2 hours after a meal. My stomach will not negotiate that point. I hate it when I try to wake her up, and she just goes back to sleep. I hate it.

"Day 5"

Happiness Level: 6 of 10

I ate crap for lunch: a single whole Whataburger and sip of Claire's soda. She'll tell you that I drank over half of it, but in reality, I just had a sip. She exaggerates. Anyway, I looked up the nutritional information on that sucker and sans a large Coke and fries, I only ate about 650 calories or so. The problem is that a lot of them were fat calories and the burger had a fair amount of cholestorol in it. I definitely can do with less cholestorol.

For dinner, we went to Chili's. I had some chicken pasta and my share of the skillet queso. Sooo good. Since this is a restaurant in Round Rock, I had to get a soda. Sue me. At least I didn't feel like I overate at dinner. So that was good.

Right before my 10pm deadline, I ended up eating a Little Debbie cupcake and drank some more water. Sounds like I ate a lot today, but I still ate less than I normally would have for the day. If I could just start exercising...

Speaking of which... my legs started to feel better today. I think Wednesday will be my first day around the neighborhood. We'll see how that goes. My hearts been feeling funny lately. For those that don't know, I have Wolff Parkinson White syndrome. And that sucks.

I totally forgot to call my parents, but I did talk to them two days in a row... Sunday and Monday, so I don't feel so bad. I owe them a call tomorrow.

I actually got through a whole book with Maddie, but it was just the Itsy Bitsy Spider which is just like 1 sentench a page and like 8 pages. ;)

Poker was OK, but I felt I could have done better. I was up $22 for the night. I guess it could have been worse.

And finally, the financial stuff I was worrying about has been pretty addressed. I feel a bit better about that now.

"Day 4"

Happiness Level: 5 of 10

Most of my day was spent worrying about financial matters. That boat trip really kicked my ass. I figured we spent between $425 and $450 on Saturday. And we're still recovering from some 'surprise' payments I had to make. Things are looking horribly for the next two weeks, financially speaking. That's got me pretty down.

I had a decent lunch. I ordered 1 Cowboy Taco from Taco Deli and shared Clarie's grilled chicken salad. We learned from last time we ordered it that it's way too much for one person. I had water to drink. As an afternoon snack, I had about 1/3 of a bag of animal crackers. Why is it that any brand of animal crackers other than that Barnum & Bailey brand with the circus train box is just utterly bland? They taste like slightly sweetened cardboard. Maddie didn't seem to mind though. She took care of the rest of the bag later in the day.

For dinner I had some Rudy's brisket. I had less than I'd normally have, but more than 1/2 of my usual. So that probably wasn't good. To top it off, I can't bring myself to drink Round Rock tap water. Screw that. So I had to get some Powerade to drink. I'm letting that be known right now, if I'm eating in a Round Rock restaurant, ain't no way I'm going to drink tap water. Blech.

In the evening, around 9:30, I made myself a PB&J as a snack, but after one bite, I looked at the crust of the bread and got grossed out. It looked like it had this whitish stuff on it. It was probably meant to be that way (it was fancy wheat bread with lots of natural nuts and crap in it), but it reminded me way too much of white fuzzy mold. I spit out the bite I had taken and rinsed out my mouth like 10 times. I swore it tasted sour, but honestly, it was probably all in my head. One time, as a kid, I woke up screaming because I thought there was a huge rat laying across my legs. Turns out it was just the folds in the covers and some crazy shadows. Anyway, I wasn't taking any chances. I tossed the bread and the sandwich and made do with a few Ritz crackers instead.

The reading-to-Maddie thing still isn't going too well. Or rather, it's not going as expected. I keep wanting to actually read to her, but she never lets me get too far before she just grabs the book and plays "Daddy, what's this?" with every illustration. Also, the reading was supposed to be putting her to sleep. Instead, it invigorates her. It's playtime, not bedtime when I pull out a book. Perhaps I'll read/play with her before it's time for her to go to bed. In any case, she loves spending time with her Dada.

Legs were still too sore to run/walk around the neighborhood. I can't even make it down the stairs without grimacing. I suck at this being-fit stuff. I'll see how my legs feel tomorrow.

"Day 3"

Happiness Level: 6 of 10

Pretty tired today. I slept most of it. Claire was pretty supportive. Lots of times I feel that if I sleep too much on a weekend or take an evening nap during the week, Claire gets frustrated with me. I feel like I'm supposed to be doing something instead of just laying in bed. But I have to say that this Sunday she was pretty supportive... especially considering she was pretty sunbeat herself. I don't even know how she was able to go to the pool today. I'm done with water for a while.

There was no way I was doing the run around the neighborhood today. Just no way. My legs feel like total crap. I have a feeling they won't even be good to go tomorrow. I'm going to have to be realistic at the risk of sounding lazy. My legs just won't go right now.

I did call my parents. They were still in Florida visiting my sister. Apparently my dad and mom developed a cold. They were concerned that Maddie might have caught it too since they spent a lot of time with her before they flew out to Florida last week. Luckily, Maddie's fine. I also got to talk to my sister for a bit. She happened to be around when I was talking with my dad. She seems well. I promised to send her updated pictures of Maddie. I'll have to take care of that soon.

I didn't overeat today. That's a good thing. I always feel like crap when I overeat. That pizza last night was kiling me. Ugh. My first meal today started off with Claire waking me up with a homemade hamburger for lunch. She makes great hamburgers. I had a few light potato chips on the side and my requesite bottle of water. That hit the spot. A few hours later while they were at the pool, I got a little hungry and made myself a PB&J sandwich. I almost didn't eat that, but I was hungry dammit. To make up for it, I simply had some tortilla soup from Chuy's and another bottle of water for dinner. It's a good thing that Chuy's is stingy with the chips and salsa when you get food to go because I would have probably eaten way too many chips with salsa otherwise.

Maddie was being quite fussy in the evening. Again I attempted to read to her. And while I did get a bit further this time, she again grabbed the books out of my hand and just wanted me to indentify people (or in Sesame Street-land, monsters) and objects for her while she repeated them. Since both Claire and I were still exhausted, we attemped to put Maddie to bed early. Unfortunately, she took a late afternoon nap with Daddy, and that screwed it all up. She would have none of it and stayed up until past midnight... despite being in bed with us at 9:30pm. I ended up watching a lot of cartoons with her on Boomerang, but in the end, she outlasted me. Claire, who'd gotten some rest while I watched TV with Maddie, ended up finally getting her to go to sleep. I'm ready for a new week, please.

"Day 2"

Happiness Level: 7 out of 10

Man, that boat trip kicked my ass. I'm a bit sunburned, but not too bad. Sometimes having fun is simply exhausting. ;)

First the bad news. I've already failed a few things. I didn't call my parents today. So that's 0 for 2 days. I'll have to call them tomorrow for sure. I also think that I ate passed 10 o'clock. We ordered some pizza and I started eating before 10pm, but I'm pretty sure I continued eating passed 10pm at some point. However, I will fully admit that on Friday night I started eating at 10:05pm or so. I didn't get to eat dinner, and we got stuck at HEB buying food for the boat trip until almost 10pm. So I *had* to eat something, right? I dunno. I think that giving a few minutes grace after 10pm is fine. I mean the point is really to keep myself from eating too late. I'm not Cinderella or a Mogwai. My coach won't turn back into a pumpkin at 12:01am, and I won't morph into a Gremlim if I eat passed 12:01am either.

I still haven't jogged/walked around my neighborhood so far, but I figure I got more than enough exercise on the boat trip today... as evidenced by my entire body being sore. I'm truly out of shape. I easily doubled or tripled the amount of exercise that I would have gotten if I would have just gone a few laps around my neighborhood. So my conscience is clear there. Again, the point is to exercise, not to run around the neighborhood because it needs to be run around.

Poker's got me a bit bummed. I've had a horrible week. That's negative happiness right there. I've had to finally use the writing-shit-down-on-a-piece-of-paper-when-I'm-pissed trick because of the poker game. My luck is just shitty. All-in. AQs vs ATo. AQs should win about 75% of time time. Unless you're me. Of course I lost. The rest of the night went downhill after that.

But let's get back to some good news. I'm glad that I did manage to read to Maddie tonite. Of course, she didn't go to sleep after I read to her, she just got more riled up. But I'm glad I got to read to her anyway. Actually, it was more of an 'attemped' reading. She kept grabbing the books out of my hand after I'd get about half-way through a page, and then she'd start randomly flipping through the books poiting at things and having me identify them for her: That's an apple, Maddie. "Abbel". Yes, that's Elmo. "Ehmo!". That's a cookie. "CookCook!" Yes, a cookcook. I guess at this point, it's more helpful for me to assist her in learning new objects and people than it is to explain to her phonetics. It might be a bit early for that. In any case, she was happy, so that's all that matters.

"Day 1"

Happiness Level: 7 of 10

Today is Day 1 of my little social experiment on myself. The goal is to see if I can literally control my level of happiness. Or more accurately, the goal is to see if I can up that happiness level by making some key changes in my day-to-day actions. A lot of the changes are health-centric, so I suspect (hope) that I will feel less sluggish as the month goes on, but quite a few of the changes are meant to actually make me 'feel' better about myself and the people I associate with.

There might be a major monkeywrench thrown into my plan though. I very well might be changing jobs soon. I don't plan to leave the company, I'm not fired, and I'm not being laid off, but my current project is winding down and both my manager and I feel that I should get out and acquire some new experiences within the company. I've been in the same place for too long. It's always scary leaving your comfort zone, and it will probably negatively affect my happiness level until my new destination is confirmed. And then maybe even after that I might not be comfortable for a while. In any case, we'll see.

I had Taco Deli for lunch. Normally I have two tacos, rice, beans and a MexiCoke. I decided I'd start off easy and just go with two tacos and water. Not quite my plan of eating 1/2 of what I'd normaly eat, but still an improvement. It probably would have been OK had Claire not ordered a Grilled Chicken Salad and left many of those tasty morsels of chicken laying atop their salady bed. I couldn't resist, and I mean, it was grilled chicken so it wasn't like it was unhealthy, right? ;) In any case, I still believe my meal was healthy if a bit too much in volume.

I've not yelled today, but I need to remember to carry a pocketsized notepad around with me just in case I need to 'yell into it.' The plan is to write down all the stuff I'd normally yell out loud. I think I watched too much Bob Newhart on Nick at Night (Bob Newhart played a pychiatrist on TV in the '70s.)

"Experiment for June"

I'm going to perform an experiment on myself. I'm going to see if I can improve the quality of my life by following the rules below for the entire month of June. I'll be posting to this blog at least once a day with an update. You can also follow my goings on more closely at http://twitter.com/MrKatsu

Health

• See the doctor for a checkup.
  
• Get on cholestorol medication. Take it everyday.
• Excercise. Jog/Walk 4 'big laps' around the neighborhood at least 3 times a week.
• Eat approximately 1/2 of what I'd normally eat.
• Except on special occasions (Boat Trip, etc.) only drink water.
• Do not eat after 10pm.
• Go to sleep no later than 1am on Tue/Thu. 12am on Mon/Wed/Sun. 2am Fri/Sat.

Relationships

• Remind my wife that I love her everyday. Don't just say the words.
• Call my parents every other day. Just leave message if they don't answer.
• Call my grandmother this month.
  
• Be more patient with idiots.
• Don't Yell. Carry a notepad and write shit down instead. Read it later.

Maddie

• Take her someplace every weekend: SA Zoo, Ready Set Play, Sea World, Kids Day Park BBQ
• Spend at *least* one uninterrupted hour a day with her doing what she wants to do.
• Read to her before bedtime whenever possible.

Finances

• Don't buy a new game unless I finish an old game.
• Eat dinner at home 4 times a week. I'll even cook if I have to.

"The 4th Annual Lake Travis Boat Trip 2007"

Update (5/30/07): Well, not enough people followed through so we're now doing 1 large new deluxe boat instead of 2 smaller older boats. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We get a nicer boat, for one. So that's good. We're also still doing the two wave runners, so don't worry about that. The bad part, for us anyway, is that now the $75/person won't even cover the rentals completely. It'll come close, but instead of bothering with raising the fee a few bucks, Claire and I will just take a loss on the rental cost. And as promised, we'll still make good on buying food and beer. It's only fair. However, if you wanna help out with bringing more food/alocohol, please let us know. In the end, it'll all be good times.

Update (5/22/07): Due to less than 34 but quite a bit more than 17 people signed up, we're going with two 12 person boats now instead of 17 person boats. Nothing else will change. List updated BTW.

Update (5/17/07): The 1st Boat is filling up fast! Get those payments into us ASAP. If you need a mailing address. Just email me or Claire.

Time: Saturday, June 2nd. 12noon - 8pm.
Where: Daybreak boat rentals near Carlos & Charlies on Lake Travis
Price: $75 non refundable. Paid up front to hold a spot.

It's coming! Girls, stop eating. Guys, start working out. The Annual Lake Travis Boat Trip 2007 is June 2nd! If you've never been to one before, you're in for a treat. If you have, I know you're already on your way to us to lay down your cash to reserve a spot. It's *that* awesome.

Here's the recipe for fun: Preheat your lake to 72 degrees. Take two one pontoon party boats and two fast as shit wave runners and place them carefully in the warm lake water. Peel 34 20 people down to 1 or 2 articles of clothing and evenly sprinkle them across the boats and the wave runners. Add lots of food and alcohol and let everything simmer under the hot sun for 8 hours. Enjoy.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. What's included for $75?
A. A spot on the pontoon party boat. Access to the wave runners. Food and Drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.) Basically, 8 hours of fun! That's less than $10 an hour!

Q. Can I bring my own food? How much food is provided?
A. Yes, bringing extra food is welcomed and encouraged. The fact is that 100% of the $75 is going directly to rental fees. So don't go expecting lobster and champagne. However, we should have enough snacks (chips, dips, cookies, fruits, etc.) and food (sandwiches mostly) for everyone.

Q. Will you be providing enough beer/alcohol cuz I can drink a lot of PBR!
A. Probably not, Hueby. We will be bringing quite a bit, but it's always hard to gauge how much is enough. Also, if you want a certain type of drink, it's safer just to bring some of your own.

Q. What happens if 24 don't sign up? *UPDATED*
A. That depends. If we're shy like 1 person? Nothing. If we're shy like 4-6 people, we either have to raise the price (not really wanting to do that) or cut it down to the first 12 and just do 1 pontoon boat and 1 wave runner. So get signed up and paid up ASAP, and there won't be a problem! (OK, this actually happened. We were short 4 people so we're now on 1 big new boat instead of 2 smaller older ones. However, the price didn't go up and the waverunners will stay at 2 cuz we're fucking nice and just ate the loss.)

Q. How many did you have last year?
A. 23

Q. When's the Deadline for signing up? *UPDATE*
A. We're going to take an official tally of the paid partipants on May 20th. (It's done passed.)

Q. Will I be assigned to a specific boat? *UPDATE*
A. No. Both boats will travel *together* and anchor near each other so that people may swim/change boats at their leisure. (We're just on one deluxe boat now, so this questions is N fucking slash A.)

Q. How will using the Wave Runners work?
A. The Wave Runners will be running constantly. They sit 1 or 2 people. Typically people take them out for 10-15 minutes at a time and then come back to the anchored pontoon boats to trade out with someone. Once everyone has had a go 'round, we start all over again. There has never been a problem with sharing these. 10-15 minutes at a time is plenty. Trust me.

Q. What if I need to get there late?
A. The boats leave at 12 noon. So you'll have to be at the docks no later than 11:15 in order to allow for moving your shit onto the boats and taking part in the Wave Runner lecture that they have to give you before we can rent the Wave Runners. If you *know* you're gonna be there late (Kids have a soccer game that morning, etc.), we can send a Wave Runner back to the dock to pick you up. Note that even though Wave Runners have water tight storage compartments, they aren't that big so keep that in mind if you need to get picked up. If we *absolutely have to*, we can send back a pontoon boat for you, but that'll piss of about a dozen or so people.

Q. What if I need to leave earlier than 8pm?
A. We'll get you back to the dock via Wave Runner/Boat at whatever time you need.

Q. What does Claire, i.e the Marketing Dept, say about all of this?
A. "Keep in mind this is the sickest sweetest gathering you will go on this year."

Q. Who's signed up so far?
A. As of May 30th, 3:40pm... The FINAL List:

1) Rob - Paid in Full
2) Claire - Paid in Full
3) Bizzy - Paid in Full
4) Banni - Paid in Full
5) Brian - Paid in Full
6) Serg - Paid in Full
7) Evaleen - Paid in Full
8) Dave - Paid in Full
9) Dave's Friend Brad - Paid in Full
10) Aaron - Paid in Full
11) Judy - Paid in Full
12) G - Paid in Full
13) Hueby - Paid in Full
14) Holly Wood (I'm not even kidding.) - Paid in Full
15) Kolchak - Paid in Full
16) Kolchak's Friend Matt - Paid in Full
17) Dave's Mystery Friend #1 - Paid in Full
18) Dave's Mystery Friend #2 - Paid in Full
19) Lindsey - Paid in Full
20) Johnspeed - Paid in Full

Removed from List (i.e 'Jerk Stores'): Will, Marc, Mike, Amy, Nick, Sean, Jet, Ed, Christy

First to pay = First to Secure a Spot!

Remember that this is just the signup priority.

This is a hastily written, un-proofread analysis of the top 10 DS games as rated by www.gamerankings.com.

(GameRankings Rank) (Title) (Publisher) (GR's Score) (Rob's Score out of 5)
1. Mario Kart DS - Nintendo - 92.20% GR - 4 Rob

This is just like all the other Mario Karts. Fun game, but relies too much on the luck of the powerups. If you're behind, you get kickass powerups like the Blue Shell that homes in on the 1st place racer. That's sorta lame. It does support wireless peer-to-peer and internet play though. That's sorta cool. Overall, it's quite fun, but I am starting to get tired of the formula.

Buy if... you love Mario, non-serious racing, or loved all the other Mario Karts.


2. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - Konami - 90.50% GR - 4 Rob

Like so many games on this list, this is another episode in a series of franchise games. This is supposed to be 2D side-scrolling at it's finest. And I'm sure it is. Personally, I was never a big Castlevania fan so it's kind of 'meh' for me.

Buy if... you love Castlevania, 2D sidescrollers, or supporting a Non-Nintendo product in the top 10

3. Advance Wars: Dual Strike - Nintendo - 90.50% GR - 5 Rob

Man, I can already tell I'm going to get tired of this, but again, another derivative game. I should just start writing, if you like Game X, then you'll love Game X: The DS Version. It would save me a lot of time. Anyway, for what it does, it does quite well. AW: DS is a turn based strategy game that's simple enough to be enjoyable by the masses and yet deep enough to be enjoyed by hardcore strategy game nuts. It's got a manga style graphics and a convoluted storyline, but neither will get in the way of enjoying this game. There are a lot of Commanding Officers to choose from, each with their own unique Super Power-ups. It's almost like there are too many because some of the powerups are sorta lame or unbalanced and you'll find yourself just picking the same set of CO's over and over. There are tons and tons of maps and you can even create your own. The Dual Screen usage is pretty cool, but ultimately I liked the old style maps with just one screen. In any case, it's hella fun in multiplayer mode.

Buy if... You like strategy games, you like multiplayer madness, or you like, you guessed it, Advance Wars for the GBA.


4. New Super Mario Bros. - Nintendo - 88.90% GR - 4 Rob

... I'm not even gonna say it. Sigh. OK, well, on the bright side, this is one really good Mario game. And honestly, we haven't seen a traditional side scroller Mario game in a long ass time. So maybe I should cut them some slack for making another Mario game. I think I'm burned out on Mario just because he's in every other game published by Nintendo.

Buy if... you're a girl, you're old-school, you like fun, if unoriginal, games.

5. Meteos - Nintendo - 88.60% GR - 1 Rob

This game sucks. I have no idea why people suck on Meteos' dick so hard. The idea behind this puzzle game is that you move around blocks to match colors (surprised?) You do this by selecting a block with the stylus and sliding up or down a column until you get 3 same colored blocks lined up horizontally across 3 columns. When they line up, they fire off rockets that propel the blocks above them up towards the top of the screen. Sometimes you have to fire off rockets more than once before they completely leave the screen (the goal.) Problem is... the gameplay is flawed. I got pretty damn far just randomly moving my stylus around the screen. The Blocks would randomly line up and fire rockets. For a puzzle game, that's horrible.

There are better puzzle games out there.

Buy if... you hate good gameplay in your puzzle games, you love Mizuguchi, you find it for < $5 and then give it to your worst enemy for his bday.

6. Kirby: Canvas Curse - Nintendo - 87.60% GR - NA

I never played this game. So... OK.

Buy if... you love Kirby??

7. Super Mario 64 DS - Nintendo - 86.40% GR - 3 Rob

This game was AWESOME for the N64. For the DS, the control sucks balls. It emulates an analog stick with the stylus. That blows. It also allows you to use the regular D-Pad and hit a button to run. That sucks too. Without analog controlled, this game is ruined.

Buy if... you never played the proper N64 version, you find it for < $10, there is no 3rd reason.

8. Animal Crossing: Wild World - Nintendo - 86.40% GR - 3 Rob

I never played the DS version, but it looks a lot like the Gamecube version, and that was pretty damn boring. So you move into the town of Animal Crossing and you set up a house and then you do boring shit like work, collect crap and decorate. This isn't really a game. It's more of the simulated grind of adulthood with cutesy graphics and retarded minigames. The DS version includes online functionality which lets you interact with other real-world peopel's towns via Wi-Fi. So you can trade crappy gifts and shit. Girls love this shit.

Buy if... you love to decorate your house (you're gay,) you don't have any real life friends, or you're a girl.

9. Elite Beat Agents - Nintendo - 86.40% GR - 5 Rob

I really liked this game, but I can see other people not getting into it. It's a music/rhythm game, so if you ain't got the rhythm, stay off the dance floor. The game is crazy. The premise is over the top: you're part of an elite force of dancing... umm... agents... that gets sent in to help people cope with everyday situations like taking getting a cat out of a tree or driving a prego to the hospital in a cab or dealing with a bunch of bratty kids that this hottie is babysitting. The most serious scenario, helping a little girl dealing with the loss of her father, is actually quite touching and is one of my favorite levels. The song that you have to dance to are covers of mostly well recognized pop tunes. Cavaet: If you're out of touch with poppy radio songs, you might not know 1/2 of these songs. The gameplay consists of tapping and dragging the stylus in time with the rhythm of the songs. It takes a little getting used to and it does start off slow. But then the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. Overall, the control works wonderfully once you figure thigns out.

Buy if... you love music games, you like something different and wacky, you like pop music.

10. Tetris DS - Nintendo - 86.30% GR - 4 Rob

Are you serious? It's tetris. C'mon.

Buy if... you're into tetris, you're gf loves tetris, you are tetris (what??)

"Netflix Movie Reviews"

Here's some weird shit I Netflixed recently:

Cannibal Holocaust - 3/4 stars - Italy - The first Blair Witch Project. Documentary filmmakers go to the Amazon to film cannibals. They disappear. Their film is found later and screened. The atrocities! The inhumanity! The savageness of the documentary crew towards the natives is startling! (Yes, towards the natives.) Pretty real looking guts and shit. And, oh, by the way, animals WERE harmed during the making of this film. Monkey brains extracted from a live (well, up to the point of extraction) monkey. A huge ass turtle butchered and cooked in front of your very eyes. And they kill bugs too! No shit. ASPCA eat your heart out (Get it, cannibals... nevermind.)

Mark of the Devil - 3/4 stars - German - Originally famous for passing out barf bags at every screening. It has torture scenes. Oh, my. But as you might guess, it's not nearly as disturbing in 2006 as it might have been way back when (1970.) I sought this out because it starred Udo Kier in his first big role. It was just a bonus that this was the famous "barf bag" movie I'd heard about. Udo was the awesome German guy in the Masters of Horror Season 1 episode "Cigarette Burns" directed by John Carpenter. This movie actually has some sort of story believe it or not.

I Spit On Your Grave - 3/4 stars - USA - Having selected Mark of the Devil, Netflix suggested that maybe I'd like this flick too. Oh, I dunno. It just has the longest rape seen ever in a movie. No big deal. Of course, it's really not that big of a deal. Again, this movie is old and sensationalism rarely lives up to the hype... especially decades old sensationalism. Still it's quite entertaining with a few friends and some alcohol. Plus, the chick gets the last laugh, so it's OK, right? C'mon, the alternate, though way less cool, title, "Day of the Woman" gives that away, right?

In the Realm of the Senses - 1/4 stars - Japan - According to Neflix, this movie has never been seen in Japan in its original form. Probably cuz they show too much snatch. As in any snatch. Best part? When the guy sticks a hard boild egg up said hairy snatch. And she 'lays' it out for him. He naturally eats his newly seasoned egg. Hot, no? Other than that hotness, nothing in this fucking movie made any fucking sense. Oh, wait, I forgot. She actually gives him real head on camera. Rent Download an asian porno instead.

Romance - 1/4 stars - French - Honestly, I don't even remember watching this. Again it was suggested by Netflix... this time after selecting I Spit On Your Grave. I guess it's thinking: "Like long rape scenes? Cool, try this movie 'Romance.'" I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want my sister to go out on a date with Netflix. It's kinda got a weird sense of romance. Oh, wait. I remember. This was a
shitty movie about a girl that had an affair cuz her lover wouldn't fuck her. Huh? Yeah. And her choice to do the nasty with? None other than Rocco Siefriddi... Seffiedi, Seeefreeedddiii.. or however you spell that fuckers' name. You know, the porn actor with the accent. Anyway, yeah, his dick comes out in this movie. Lame.

Lies - 3/4 stars - Korean - Old Korean guy fucks young Korean girl. They get into an S&M thing... whippings and beatings. The movie gets some props for breaking up her cherry popping scene with titles like "First Hole", "Second Hole" and my favorite and yours "Third Hole." Yes, she takes it in the cornhole on her first night of sex. Nice. Way to get 'em trained early on, old Korean guy. Then again, his life turns to shit.

Anatomy of Hell - 1/4 stars - French - More hairy bush, more Siffredi. You take the good with the bad. BTW, the good is the bush. The bad is Siffredi. Just wanted to make that clear. Let's see. A fucked up chick hires this well hung gay guy to watch her 'be sexual' with herself for a few days for no fucking reason I can remember. He ends up sleep fucking her, but not before he paints her lips bright red with lipstick. Her *pussy* lips I mean. Oh, let's not forget the part where he pulls out her tampon, and she puts it in a glass of water and they fucking drink the murky pink water. Wonderful. Guaranteed to get your date to close her fucking legs up for the night.

A Real Young Girl - 2/4 stars - French - Fucking weird movie about a 15 yr old-ish French country girl that is getting her hormones on. I never watched it all the way through. It kinda freaked Claire out. I mean, they show her bush and everything. And she really does look 15. Euros man. Crazy fuckers. Nothing much to say about it. I mean, the girl's cute. That's about it. Oh, and she throws up on herself
like no big deal in one scene. Yeah.

"The Da Vinci Code Review"

The movie, not the book... fuck reading. I don't have the patience to sit and stare at thousands of words until they entertain me. Reading is far too time consuming and an archaic form of entertainment as far as I'm concerned. It's akin to gathering the family 'round the ol' RCA to listen to the latest radio drama.

That being said, it's not too surprising to know that I only had a very vague idea of what the hell this movie was about. I knew it was based on some hotshit book that sold tons of copies, and only right before I went to go see it did I find out that religious freaks were boycotting it. Yes, I was that clueless.

I honestly expected it to be a lot more about Da Vinci and a lot less about Christianity, but that explains the religious nuts being all up and arms about it doesn't it? I'm quasi-Cahtolic, and I still don't get why Catholics get their panties in a bind over works of fiction like this.

Anyway, I liked it. It wasn't the best movie or even story I had ever come across, but it was definitely not bad. There were certain elements that I felt were a little silly, but I'm not sure if the movie or the book was to blame. For instance, as soon as it was revealed that the Grail was a person, I knew it was Sophie. It was ridiculous to even pretend that the audience wouldn't figure that out right then and there (though it's definitely possible for even me to underestimate the general public.) Also, why the fuck did Sophie's 'grandfather' make shit so fucking hard to figure out? To protect the secret? The puzzles were so convoluted that it was easily possible for no one to be able to makes sense of the clues. If the location of the Grail was so damn important, why would he risk it being lost forever by creating all those impossibly random puzzles? Silly I tell you.

However, for the most part, if you suspend disbelief for long enough, the story isn't too bad. You see, the REAL reason for those crazy-ass puzzles is to entertain the reader/movie-goer. Traveling from place to place, figuring out clues, avoiding the bad guys, cracking the code. Exciting! Drama! Adventure! And indeed, there were enough twists and turns that kept me focused (although Claire did fall asleep in certain places.) It kind of reminded me of an Indiana Jones adventure with fewer tribal natives and a far less cool protagonist.

And as far as characters go, I expecially liked Silas. His parts in the movie were fucking awesome. If Silas was in the scene, people were like... Oh, fuck, what's gonna happen now? He evoked emotion and tension. Teabing was great too. He had some awesome lines, and I was genuinely convinced by his convinction. So, yeah, Magneto did a great job. Too bad the other characters weren't as interesting. I mean Hanks was OK, but I really didn't give too big of a shit (maybe a shart) about Sophie. She could have easily been relegated to flashbacks and an appearance towards the end. I just didn't care about her.

It was interesting to me that there didn't seem to be any true 'bad' guys. Sure, there were people that chased our hero around, but I really can't fault any of them. The Bishop was doing what he thought was right. Silas was doing what he thought was right. Fache was doing what he though was right. Same with Teabing and Sophie. And really, who are we to say which faction was right or wrong? I could see both sides of the argument, and didn't really know who to root for. Hell, even Sophie didn't know if she was going to let the cat out of the bag once she found out she was the Grail.

Overall, I'd recommend this movie for those that enjoy thrillers/mysteries. If you're a fan of the book, you'll probably like this movie too because it appears that the movie is quite close to the book (according to what I've read about the whole Da Vince Code thing.) I'd say this movie is 8 times better than the Transporter.

"Sony PS3"

The PS3 details have been announced. Wow. $499 for the basic model and $599 for the full blown version. Wow. I am honestly surprised. I was thinking that it would be $450 tops. And I didn't even consider the possibility of them releasing two versions. I think Sony is in trouble. They're going to be a year late to the game and with a console that's 50% more expensive too. I know that their $599 console has some cool features like built-in WiFi, a fat 60GB HDD, a motion sensitive controller (Hi, Nintendo!,) and an HDMI port, but damn... that's a lot of money for your average Joe Gamer.

I know I'll be buying one of course. The Deluxe model please. And I know that their initial allotment will sell out because there are enough hardcore gamers out there to snatch them up, but its hard to make it in the games business catering to the hardcore gamer. I mean, you can do well for yourself catering to the hardcore, but you're not going to be the industry leader. And I doubt Sony will be happy relinquishing their industry leader crown.

Personally, I think Blu-Ray fucked them. First, it caused a delay in the shipment of the PS3. Now, it's causing the PS3 to be expensive as fuck. Way to go. I don't even think that the public is ready for either HDDVD or Blu-Ray. People only recently rebuilt their movie library with DVDs after tossing their VHS tapes. Now they're being asked to rebuild it again? It's too soon. The only saving grace is that the new HD disc players are backwards compatible. That helps, but I still don't see too many people re-buying their movies on an HD disc format anytime soon... at least not en masse.

Blu-Ray on PS3 is akin to the boneheaded move Nintendo made opting for a catridge based N64. They'll survive, but they're not going to lead. Sony's reign at #1 will end. Who'll take over #1 spot? MS? Perhaps? Nintendo? Possibly. But count Sony out of the top spot this time around.

"Silent Hill Review"

Hmmm... why does it seem like I only review horror movies? I don't even consider myself a horror movie aficionado. Maybe it's because they're often so bad that they piss me off enough to make me write something up about them. Or Maybe its because I feel compelled to warn others not to waste their time or money on them. No, wait, those were my motives for reviewing the "The Transporter"... a horror of a movie more than a horror movie, but still, it's scary that it got a sequel. What the fuck was I talking about? Oh, horror movies... Silent Hill. Right.

Before release, many of the gaming websites who are usually cynical about game-to-movie adaptations were opining that Silent Hill could actually be pretty good. The trailer looked very Silent Hill-y. The script writer, Roger Avery, was a huge gamer who was so hardcare that he even restored old Atari arcade uprights as a hobby. It had a decent director in Chris Gans (also a gamer.) And most importantly, Uwe Boll had nothing to do with it. The game community just ate it up. Who can blame them? They were starved for a even a decent game-to-silverscreen flick.

Then came the first sign of trouble: no advanced screening for reviewers. That's never a good sign. Personally, I never like to read reviews of movies that I plan to see. So it didn't really bother me that I couldn't use movie reviews to gauge my expectations. When I heard that there were no advanced sceenings, it was more of a "Oh, shit. That better not mean it's gonna suck!" reaction. Even still, I went to go see it with the not-so-high hopes that it would be the best video game movie yet. And you know what? I'm not so sure that it wasn't.

Most of my friends hated it. Then again, most of my friends are idiots. Now I'm not going to say that Silent Hill was a great movie, but it doesn't take much to take the Best Video Game Movie Ever crown. C'mon... what it's up against? Mortal Kombat? Tomb Raider? Resident Evil? It's not like those movies are in danger of ever making the AFI top 100 movies of all time. Honestly, I don't know what my friends were expecting out of Silent Hill. A direct game-to-movie script? *MORE* gore? Bare breasts? Hmmm... honestly, there's never too much tittage in horror movies as far as I'm concerned. I mean, if you've already got the R rating... Right? Right.

So what things did I like? Well, first of all, I liked the mood. It 'felt' like Silent Hill. I also liked how they explained the fogginess and how the town was evacuated so quickly. I've only played through Silent Hill 2 so maybe some people were more bothered by the lack of strict adherence to the game script, but I didn't mind it. If you're trying to condense hours upon hours of gameplay into a 2 hour movie, you're gonna need to change some shit around, and I think Avery did a decent job of it while Gans did a good job of visualizing it for us.

And what didn't I like? The worst thing about the movie, for me, was that even though it was way long for a horror flick, that they wussed out and summed up the 'why?' in a spoken 15 minute segment. It felt to me like they were telling the story, and then they ran out of time so they just broke down and hand fed us the reasoning for everything so that they could get to the climactic boss battle at the end. It would probably have been better as a Kill Bill-ish Vol 1/Vol 2 deal. Though I'm sure that was not an option as far as Hollywood business goes.

Also, while I liked Avery's handling of the setting, his dialogue sucked. I absolutely hate hearing the audience laugh during horror movies, but some of the dialogue in Slient Hill was so absurd that I could totally understand why the audience was chuckling in some places.

Overall, I liked Silent Hill. And it seems like most gamers liked it. It was just the critics that hated the shit out of it (and my stupid friends.) Kotaku had a post on how movie review sites like MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes had complied overwhelmingly negative critics' reveiws for the movie while the user ratings on those same sites were overwhelmingly positive. Even on IMDB, Silent Hill has earned, up to this point, a respectable 6.7 out of 10 rating. If you're wondering if you've missed anything by not playing the games. Probably not. Like I said, I only played through one of the four Silent Hill games myself.

My Rating: 7.5 x better than The Transporter.

"The Hills Have Eyes Review"

Just saw this movie last night... I'll get to the point. It sucked.

I know, I know, most horror movies suck, but for some reason Claire and I were under the impression that this was supposed to be a good movie. I thought I remembered hearing some positive buzz about the movie, and I vaguely remember the ads being somewhat interesting. But to be honest, I didn't really look into it very much. I saw this as a postive thing as the last horror movie I went to see where I didn't know much about it was the American version of The Ring, and that movie was quite good.

Anyway, spoilers abound...

First of all, we thought this was going to be something about some hills out in a dark forrest area with a dilapidated house sitting on top of some hill that was really an ancient demonic ritual site or something like that. Instead its about a family of vacationers that get stuck out in the desert of New Mexico and fall victim to a bunch of nuclear fallout mutants that all look like Sloth from The Goonies. Even worse, the majority of the movie is set during the day. Not scary.

If you remember the tagline for this movie "The lucky ones die first." You'll know another reason why I was so disappointed. That line implies that 1) the ones that die at the end, die the worst deaths and 2) that a lot of people will be dying. Neither are true. Three 'good guys' die. Three. Well, four if you count the guy that killed himself, but I don't think that should count because I think he was more of a 'bad guy' anyway. And as for dying first? The guy that dies first gets his head bashed in and is burned alive. Pretty horrible death, isn't it? How do the 2nd and 3rd people die? Shot. Yep. Shot in the belly and shot in the head. I don't know about you, but having my skull bashed in and being burned alive sounds much worse than being shot to death.

Another gripe... the movie takes forever to get to the good stuff. You know how only three people die? Well, it takes almost half of the movie for that to happen. And then they all die within 15 minutes. Boring.

Finally, I suppose there was some message that we're supposed to have taken to heart. Something about the government displacing families from their homes or some other non-issue these days. Who cares? I want to be entertained, not preached to. Fuck off.

This movie was a huge disappointment. I give it a 5.5 out of 10, but at least it wasn't The Transporter.

“Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360) Review”

I love Street Fighter II. (Yes, this is a DoA4 review, but indulge me, dammit.) I mean, as far as I’m concerned, fighting game-wise, nothing has topped it. Ever. The Street Fighter II series has some intangible qualities that no fighting has ever been able to reproduce, much less improve upon. The gameplay is simple, yet complex. The characters are now iconic. Hell, even the music is memorable.

But even still, instilled in me is the ever growing need for something newer and shinier, something better than what is already nearly perfect. No sooner had I mastered wake up dragon punches all those years ago that I started looking for the next ‘it’ game to replace it. Early on, it was Mortal Kombat. Killer Instinct made a run for the fighting game title. Then you had the barrage of SNK games. Some were good. Many were horrible. But in the end, even the good ones couldn’t compare to SF2.

Then came the 3D fighting games, and soon, button mashing became a viable fighting game strategy. This sickened me. Never in its admittedly short history, going back to Karate Champ, had the fighting game genre ever been even remotely easy to play. If you were a newb at Street Fighter, and you played someone that even kind of knew what he was doing, you got destroyed. End of story. Too bad. So sad. Suck it up and try again. And again. And again. Just like everyone else before you. All SF2 players had to go through this rite of passage before even being able to consistently throw a fireball, much less use it at the right time, or ultimately combo into it. SF2 took skill.

And these 3D fighting games, man, I mean, button mashing… ugh. And yeah, OK, I admit that button mashing isn’t going to win you any tournaments. But still, it gets you a lot further than it should. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not blind to the fact that 3D fighting games take skill to master, but it’s just not satisfying. Punch, Punch, Kick, Punch. Should *never* be considered a ‘move.’ And furthermore, it shouldn’t take 1/4 of a life bar away if you connect with it. (This is what sucked about KI, by the way.) Sure you have the timings and counters and shit like that, but honestly… all that stuff just seems… not… cool, I guess. It’s not that it doesn’t take skill to play games like Virtua Fighter or Tekken or Dead or Alive 4, it’s just that the skill needed to play those games just seems sort of gay. It’s kind of like being good at synchronized swimming. It’s hard and shit, no doubt, but wouldn’t you rather be good at real game like football or basketball or even golf?

So you’re probably thinking I hate Dead of Alive 4. The strange thing is, I don’t. As I said, I’m always looking for that one game to supplant SF2 as the best fighting game of all time. So I’m always welcoming the next big fighting game with open arms. Unfortunately, DoA4 isn’t the ultimate in fighting games. But, I begrudgingly admit that it’s still quite a bit of fun.

Perhaps I’m influenced by the fact that DoA4 is my only fighting game option on the Xbox 360. Or perhaps I’m enchanted by the online aspects of the game, or even by the hi-res boobies. In any case, I like this game. I admit it. And that should mean something from a guy that has hated nearly all 3D fighting games.

Graphics – 8.4

A sore point, for me, about the Xbox 360 is the lack of truly jaw dropping graphics in the 1st batch of games. DoA4 is among the games that disappoints graphically. Perhaps, it’s unfair to judge something based on how you think it should be, but you know what, I never said I was going to be fair. The graphics in DoA4 should be much better than they are. Period.

Of course, DoA4 has the obligatory jump in resolution and texture detail, a less than apparent jump in polygons, and a very nice framerate. Ho-hum. Boring. What I wanted to see in this generation was gameplay graphics that matched the graphics in the pre-rendered endings. Instead, what I got from my Xbox 1.5 was DoA 3.5.

Let’s take the characters’ hair. Where do I even start? It’s ass. The long flowing hair on the DoA 4 characters looks simply terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Why did they bother with long flowing ‘hair’ if they make it look more like magical ribbons that seem to move of their own volition… independently of any implied game physics… even going as far as going through the characters’ bodies. I mean, the hair polygons clipping into the shoulders of most of the characters is really noticeable. If they couldn’t do the hair right, they should have just left their hair short like in previous games.

The backgrounds are pretty good I guess, but nothing too great either. I really like the waterfall level. But when your character falls into the water, I want to see their clothes get wet. I want to see their hair droop down, soaked with water, and I want to see droplets of water go flying from their hair as their heads are popped back with a nasty kick to the face. But apparently we’ll have none of that.

The graphics are simply adequate with respect to the rest of the Xbox 360 games. People who jizz in their pants when they talk about the graphics would also probably be quite happy playing with an empty egg carton. They are easily amused. The graphics in DoA4 are nothing special people. Let’s be real.

Gameplay – 9.0

This is the real heart of the game. SF2 looks like ass by today’s standards, but the gameplay keeps me coming back again and again. I’m happy to report that the gameplay of DoA4 is decent. It’s got a nice feel to it, and while it’s very spam friendly, there are some definite skills that can be learned that will allow you to dominate less experienced players. Countering is one of those skills.

Let me just say that what I call a ‘counter,’ the game calls a ‘hold.’ Let me also say that whoever named the move where “you stop an opponents attack and retaliate against it with an attack of your own” a ‘hold’ is an idiot. It’s a fucking counter. Using their logic, a ‘throw’ would probably be called a ‘maneuver.’ Most likely this same idiot (probably Itagaki) is also the guy that named the guard/counter button, the ‘free’ button. Why not call it the ‘defense’ button? I chalk it up to the long history Japanese people have of being retarded when they name something in English. “Donkey Kong” anyone?

In any case, countering is a big deal. Apparently, it was a much bigger deal in earlier versions of DoA because it was overpowered. It had a long window where the counter was active, and it did way too much damage. The counter window has been reduced in DoA4, as has the damage performing a counter does. These are good things. That being said, there are 4 different ways you can counter in the game: forward + free (counters mid kicks), back + free (counters mid punches), up-back + free (counters high attacks) and down-back + free (counters low attacks). That means, if you’re really just guess as to what your opponent is going to do next, you only have a 25% chance of countering. Or more importantly, you have a 75% chance of getting pummeled. A word to the wise, don’t guess on what kind of counter to use. If in doubt, simply block.

The good players can pick up the attack strings being used against them and intelligently counter the last or next to the last attack. This is where being spammy gets you your ass handed to you. If you always do the same three fucking punches, a good player is going to start countering you.

Outside of counters, you have a lot of other nice subtleties in gameplay like stun moves that temporarily incapacitate your enemy if they block and multiple part throws. Nothing really new here as these things have been done before, but its still doesn’t change the fact that these moves deepen the gameplay.

Matches tend to be over pretty quickly when played at default settings: 2 rounds with the ‘Normal’ life bars. Almost too quickly. Over time, I preferred to play first to 3 rounds and with the life bars increased to Maximum to allow for longer rounds. This is with regard to Vs. mode of course. For single player games, you want that shit over as fast as possible because you’re going to be wanting to get through the game quickly to unlock bonus characters and costumes.

That brings me to the modes. There are only 2 modes worth a shit in my opinion, Story mode and Versus Mode. Story mode is how you earn the majority of your shit, so you probably want to play through that a few times. It’s not too bad. The rounds default to 1 round. But Versus mode is where I spend most of my time. That and Online Versus mode, which is basically the same shit. Time Attack and Survival? Fuck those. They’re only there to stretch out the game. Having to go through those modes to unlock the last few things really sucks.

Back to the online aspect… DoA4 does a great job of giving you an easy way to experience online Versus. Basically, the layout of online is like a virtual arcade. A group of 2 thru 16 people join a lobby. Register, then they join a game. People play their game. If it’s not your turn, you wait in line and watch the others play. When your turn comes up, if you win, great, you stay on and take another challenger. If you lose, back to the end of the line. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s awesome, and it works really well.

The only bad part of playing online is that the game can lock up on you from time to time. It generally does that when you mess around with the guide button while the game is loading. It does NOT like that. It’s easy to avoid, but it’s a bug that shouldn’t be there nonetheless. Oh, well.

What else do you wanna hear? About the Spartan? She sucks. Slow and predictable. The online lag? That just depends on your connection to the other guy. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but almost always playable. About the special DoA4 joystick? Yes, I have it and it rocks. I can’t wait to use it to play SF2 over Xbox Live Arcade. ;)

In summary, if you like how 3D fighting games play, in particular the DoA games, you’ll love the gameplay. There really isn’t a competition with regard to fighting games… soo… there you go.

Sound – 8.0

All I know is that Itagaki seems to have a hard on for Aerosmith. Why do they keep licensing Aerosmith for DoA games? WHY? Blech. Well, besides the Aerosmith, the rest of the songs aren’t bad, but they are easily forgettable. The punches and kicks and groans and grunts sound about right. The voice acting is a bit lame, however, not because it’s bad, but because it’s all in Japanese. I mean, the Americans, the Chinese, the French and German… all speak perfect Japanese. All except the Spartan. The lady who does the voice of the Spartan seemed to be the only non-Japanese name in all the credits. ;) It just doesn’t seem right that Bass speaks perfect Japanese.

Value – 9.1

If you like fighting games, you’ll play DoA4 a shitload. You can find it at some places for $49.99, but mostly it’s $59.99. Either way, if you want a fighting game, you’re gonna have to pay it. The value totally depends on how much Versus fighting you do and whether you play online. Overall, for me, it’s a great value.

Overall – 8.7

One last time: this is the only fighting game for the Xbox 360. If you liked older DoAs or even Tekken or some other bullshit, get it. End of story.

Screenshots:

Penalty on offense. Illegal Block to the back!	That's a hardcore game of pattycake!
You were warned! No counting cards!!	Mmmmmmmm... boobies.

"Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) Review"

Let me start by saying that 1) I didn’t play Call of Duty 1 or any of the CoD offshoots for the consoles and 2) I hate FPS controls on consoles – two analog sticks are shit compared to a keyboard and mouse. Couple that with the fact that I normally wouldn’t play a PC game ported over to a console, and it’s a miracle that I even played CoD2 for the Xbox 360 let alone bought it.

Here’s the deal though: the game just looked oh-so-nice at the Xbox 360 demo kiosk at Best Buy. Sooo smooth. Mmmmm. I’m a sucker for a high frame rate. Then I visited another Best Buy and they had the demo Xbox 360 setup up on a big HD TV with surround sound. Some kid had set up camp on one of those comfy gaming chairs. It looked like he’d been there all day. He was playing through the CoD2 demo like he’d done it ten or twenty times before. I stood and watched for a bit, and I suddenly found myself actually considering getting the game at launch. I kept trying to reason myself out of it… thinking that it was stupid to buy CoD2 for the Xbox 360 because if I really wanted to play it, I should play it ‘properly’ on my PC. It’d be cheaper too.

But, alas, I gave in and bought CoD2 on launch day. My final reasoning was that I would never actually play a single player campaign on the PC (I’m strictly multiplayer/deathmatch on the PC) and that even though I had a pretty high end PC, that it just wouldn’t look as nice as it did on the Xbox 360. Also, the rest of the launch titles pretty much sucked (more on that another time.) Oh, and Best Buy was handing out $10 off any game coupons too. So that helped.

Graphics – 8.9

The graphics are pretty good. No doubt. They are not so much ‘next generation’ graphics, as much as nice, solid graphics. The polygon counts aren’t unbelievable, but they’re pretty good. The textures are pretty good. The frame rate is pretty good. It’s just pretty good dammit!

While most of the demo (and the rest of the game in fact) runs at a nice 60fps, there are times where tons of explosions and/or smoke screens slow the framerate down to a reasonable, but less than perfect 30fps or so. But about 90% of the time, the frame rate is silky smooth.

The character models look well done. Their animation is on the nicer side of things, but they do get repetitive after a while. Seeing a guy walk up to a doorway, stand up against the wall and peek his head around the corner about 100 times kind of kills it.

Quite honestly, this game looks like a really nice PC game, which on its own isn’t that impressive when you think about how there we’re supposed to be in the next generation of graphics. However, when you think about how the Xbox 360 costs a mere $300-$400 dollars, it’s quite impressive they can muster up $3000 PC graphics in HD.

Gameplay – 9.0

Before I get into the actual gameplay, I have to bitch about the save game bug I came across…

First thing I noticed is that while I had let friends play CoD2, and they had made it all the way to the British missions (the middle part of the game), I couldn’t select the British missions anymore. It was very strange. I continued playing through the Russian Campaign and finished it. Then all of a sudden I was thrust back into the first Russion mission: a training mission. Since the game doesn’t allow you to move on until you finish the missions in order, I was confused as to why I was sent back to the start. Well, apparently the game had ‘forgotten’ that I had done these early missions somehow. I shrugged it off and re-did the first few missions. I didn’t really mind because my friends had been the ones that had played the early missions.

I moved on to British missions, and about halfway through those, I noticed my Russian missions were again grayed out as if they hadn’t been completed. Sure enough, after I finished my current set of British missions, I was thrust back into Russian Training… again. What the fuck? Something was very wrong. After some searching on internet forums, I found out what I didn’t want to find out: the game had a save game bug. Apparently, it was triggered when your profile loaded after the game loaded. It would keep track of where you last were, but not what you had completed, and if you saved in that state, you fucked yourself. Or rather, the game fucked you because it would save it in a state that let you finish off your current mission while claiming you hadn’t finished the missions before it. Which is a load of crap because you can’t even get to the later missions without finishing them in order.

Anyway, I found the work around: basically, never use the “continue to the next mission” option. Always save after every mission and then select you new mission from the Mission Select menu. Most importantly, upon first booting up the game, make sure your shit got loaded. If it didn’t, reload the game by going into the Multiplayer menu and exiting back into the Single player menu. It’s a load of shit that I had to do that, but it worked. I expect that type of shit from PC games that get patched a lot, but not from a console game.

Anyway, on to the actual gameplay… the controls were quite well suited to the Xbox 360 controller. I was pretty worried about that. It’s usually pretty fucked up trying to squeeze tons of PC controls onto a few buttons on a controller, but this worked well. I think it was because you only could carry two weapons, so weapon selection was easy. I always hate cycling through weapons on console controllers. Same with grenades… one shoulder button for smoke grenades and another for frag grenades. Easy. The sensitivity of the sticks seemed spot on as well. I really liked how when you hit the 'aim/zoom' button, you looked down the sights of the gun. Very cool and easy to use. Overall, it was just pretty nice to control. I didn’t have much problems with it.

During the game, you play as different soldiers. You start out as a Russian Soldier fighting the Germans on the Russian front. The levels are all fought on the snow covered grounds in the middle of a Russian winter. Next you move to a British Campaign where you play mostly as a British grunt with a short break as a Tank Commander. These are African missions and are all desert based. Finally, you get to play as an American soldier. These are fought in Western Europe and are the general village in temperate weather missions. All, with the possible exception of the tank missions, are very fun and quite enjoyable. The tank missions seemed a bit tacked on to me. They weren’t very deep. Still, they weren’t bad and they did offer a nice break from the FPS action.

For the remainder of the missions, the FPS missions, you pretty much follow the Star on the radar to your next objective. Most of the objectives are quite clea, and you don’t have to run around trying to figure out what to do. You do some recon, some holding down the fort, some taking back an area, and a lot of killing of dirty Nazi bastards. If you’ve played any FPS game, you’ll probably feel quite a home.

I like the use of smoke grenades as a battlefield tactic. The computer controller Nazis actually have trouble finding you in the smoke. Which brings me to the AI. A lot of people have been touting the AI of the characters in CoD2 as really fucking awesome. I’m here to tell you that they are pretty awesome indeed. They tend to work as a team and are no where near as dumb as say… they bad guys in Perfect Dark Zero where they’re complete morons. It really adds a sense of realism and urgency to the missions to know that the Nazis aren’t dumb drones easily picked off.

Your teammates aren’t nearly as impressive. Not because they’re idiots, but because it seems like only certain team members are allowed to die. One of my favorite characters was the Scottish gunner in the British Campaign. That guy was funny as shit. And he never died. Which is a good thing, but still it was kind of obvious who the main characters of the Campaign were and which grunts were gonna get offed. Kinda like the Star Trek missions where Spock, Kirk, McCoy and Ensign Smith beam down to the planet surface to investigate hostile activity. Guess who’s not beaming back up?

Overall, the gameplay was rock solid with fun, enjoyable missions.

Sound – 9.5

The game itself is, how should I put it, engaging. No. Enthralling. No. It’s immersive. Yeah, it’s immersive. I saw a documentary on the making of CoD2, and the developers pointed out that some old soldier dude told them that once the first shot was fired, they never stopped talking to each other. This really made a huge difference in my opinion. While in most FPSs, you play a pretty much silent one man wrecking crew, in CoD2 you really do feel like you’re part of a team… a squad… or whatever the fuck you call your group of guys in military speak. All I know is that my fellow soldiers always kept in contact with me, and it was relative speech too. They say stuff like “Jerries on your right, behind the boxes!” That’s a nice touch.

I also played this in 5.1 with a nice subwoofer. Honestly, you have to. This game sounds amazing. If you’re in another room, you’d think CoD2 was a movie. The voice acting is superb and the sound effects are massive. The resonating boom of explosions, the firing of guns in the distance, the battle chatter from your teammates and the radio, they are all simply awesome. The only problem I saw was that you played a silent hero, which doesn’t make sense since your not even playing the whole game as a single guy.


Value – 8.0

At $59.99, no game that you just play through once is gonna be a great value. I got mine for $49.99, and that’s not too bad. If you trade games in, its even a better deal. You can finish the single player missions at the default skill level in about 10-15 hours. Perfect length as far as I’m concerned. If you play on Veteran, you’re looking at a lot of restarts that will lengthen the game.

There aren’t that many Xbox 360 achievements since they basically involve finishing the game at the Veteran (i.e. hardest) difficulty setting. I’m still going through the game again to do those.

As far as multiplayer is concerned. I honestly don’t know. I didn’t try it. I was turned off by the backlash of people online that have complained bitterly about lag whilst playing CoD2 over Xbox Live. If you play on LAN, I guess it could be fun, but you’re talking about rounding up 3-4 more people with Xbox 360s and the game. That’s probably not gonna happen.

Overall – 8.9

This game was solid. I highly recommend it to FPS fans, even the ones that hate console FPSs… like me. The story was engaging and the level of immersion was phenomenal. The only ones I wouldn’t recommend this game to are people that suck at FPSs and people that have played the PC version. Everyone else should go out and get this game for their Xbox 360. And apparently, everyone did as CoD2 was the number one selling title for the Xbox 360 in 2005. 

Screenshots:

"Testing..."

Just testing this gamercard thing. If it works, there should be a flash version of my Xbox Live gamercard below...




Hmm... that didn't work. How about the straight up jpg of it?





OK, that works...

Fuck. I just tried it with IE. The flash gamercard works ONLY with IE. What a crock of shit.

"King Kong (Xbox 360) Review"

I know that the proper title is way longer than that. But "Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie" is too long to type out... nevermind. I was halfway tempted to title this "Rob Nava's Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie Un-official Review" but that's also too lo... umm.. OK...

So, anyway, this is the first Xbox 360 review I've done. In fact, I think it's the first game review I've ever put up on this site. But before I go any further, let me start off by saying that if you don't know that King Kong dies at the end, then I've just ruined it for you because King Kong dies at the end. Seriously, you should have known that. It's not a well guarded secret. I also hope you knew that the Titanic fucking sinks at the end too. I've actually run into people that didn't know that. And I don't care how old you are or what decade you were born in, King Kong falling off the Empire State building to his death is common knowledge people. Peter Jackson's version is at best, the 3rd version of the film.

Anyway, now that your caught up on things, let's get to the review.


Graphics - 7.5

Like most games on the Xbox 360, the graphics of King Kong can impress at times and under whelm at times. My first reaction was quite positive when I saw the detail on the ship's hull in the first scene. Nice textures. Keen lighting. Pretty. Then things sort of fizzled when I turned around and saw that the character models looked like ass. I mean, these things were barely better looking than the Xbox 1 models, and they animated like crap to boot. So the game then sends us towards Skull Island on a small row boat during a tumultuous storm, and I was again impressed. . . this time with the draw distance and weather effects, only to be disappointed by the crumbling rocks falling off the cliffs of the island. They just looked retarded. And that's pretty much how things went graphically: Oh, that dinosaur looks kinda cool. Blech, those plants look terrible. What a shame.

And when are developers going to stop with the shiny plastic look? Seriously, I know that its raining and things are wet, but it's ridiculous how shiny everything is in King Kong. And they must have an equally emphatic guy over in the Bump Mapping department because it looks like every single thing is bump mapped to hell. I'm sure it has its uses, but really, if "Next Gen Graphics" simply means "Bump Mapped with Shinies", count me out. I'd rather have a silky smooth frame rate than shiny bump mapping.

And really, I don't think I'm too far off from the truth. I played King Kong on Xbox 1 and it really looked close to the Xbox 360 version with the exception of the textures and lighting and possibly a higher polygon count that isn't quite as noticeable. And I'm sure that's what happened. They designed the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube versions and then added in some fancy bump mapping, lighting effects and a few more polygons. The game is essentially the same. It's akin to playing a PC game with all the graphics options turned off (Xbox 1) and then again with all the graphics optioned turned on (Xbox 360.) Does King Kong look better on the Xbox 360? Sure it does. But it's not next gen graphics to me if the game is identical in every way but a few graphical features. Next gen graphics should be completely re-done from the ground up. King Kong is Next Gen Rehash.

Gameplay - 6.5

King Kong plays mostly like an FPS for dummies game with a little shallow wresting game thrown in to break things up. Most of the time, you play as Jack, the screenwriter for the film being shot on Skull Island. Your mission, as far as I can tell, is to burn down thorny bushes that block your path and find handles for intricate door opening mechanisms. That's pretty much it. You can chuck spears at dinos and shoot some crappy guns, but that's pretty much it.

The game is designed to be played without a hud. Which means no lifebar or ammo meter. This was done in order to increase the cinematic feel of the game, but for the most part no lifebar just means that you can get hit twice: once turns the screen red and another hit while your screen is red causes you to die. Occasionally, bigger dinos can kill you with one attack, but you can really just think of the game having a 2 section lifebar that regenerates after the first hit. As for the ammo, Jack will tell you how much ammo you have left when he's either running low or you hit the 'How much ammo do I have left?' button. With regards to enhancing the cinematic feeling, hearing "Two magazine on backup" over and over isn't exactly any better than showing how many bullets you have on screen.

As I already mentioned, a lot of the time you are simply searching for ways to burn bushes that block your path. This is clever puzzle the first and maybe second time you have to do it, but it gets really boring after a while. They try to break it up by having spiders block your way instead of you know, the thorny bushes. When that happens you have to spear a random giant insect or fish and throw it on the ground away from the path the spiders are blocking so that the spiders rush to the bait. Wow. Who came up with that fantastic gameplay element? Exciting! The final gameplay element is finding these wooden handles that attach to these long poles that need to be turned in order to open doors. This is the silliest thing ever. Why can I just use the spear I'm holding in my hand to jam into the pole to turn it? Why do I need that exact piece of wood to jam in there before I can turn it? It's not like it's a key. It's a fucking piece of wood. Give me a break.

I addition to the FPS Jack levels, you also play as Kong from time to time. These are pretty fun, but mostly because you're given a break from burning bushes, and you can actually beat the crap out of stuff. But the controls for the Kong missions are simplistic at best. One button swings and grabs onto the sides of cliffs, another one punches and another one grabs. You can also thump your chest to power up, but most of the time you end up getting hit before you can completely power up so that's useless. The Kong levels boil down to a simplistic wrestling game. I mean, even more simple than NES Pro Wrestling. At least you had a variety of moves in that game. In King Kong, all you have to do is shoulder butt over and over. That's pretty much it. Give that beloved Beyond Good & Evil game designer a bonus! I know I couldn't have thought of something like that. I'd have thought of something much better.

Sound - 8.5

The music and sound effects are pretty good. Good job not fucking everything up over there. The voice acting is also pretty good. Jack Black, who plays the director in the movie, is still funny as shit. I love that guy. Jack (the character you play) sounds dull and, well, dull. He doesn't even get two different adjectives. He's just dull. Really, the biggest complaint I have about the sound is that the voices are waay too low in comparison to the music and sound effects. I had to turn the music and sound effects waaaay down and leave the voice level all the way up in order to make it sound right. I guess they realized they had that problem because the did put that option in the game so you can tweak each sound level independently. Then again, I might be giving them too much credit. They might have put that option in because they saw that option in other games. In any case, you'll probably have to fuck with the sound levels a bit.

Value - 5.0

There is almost no replay value in this game. I'm a big fan of short games. I have way too many games to go through to be tied up with 40-50 hour games. Fuck that. So the fact that King Kong is a short game was actually a selling point to me. However, usually short games give you some sort of reason to replay it. King Kong doesn't. All Xbox 360 games offer achievements (which give you Gamer Points) that can be earned by doing specific things in the game. Complete a level on hard mode, get a "Hardcore Gamer" Achievement and a few Gamer Points for your Gamer Card. Maybe finish a level in a certain time or without dying, get more points. Not so with King Kong. If you play through the game, you get all 1000 Gamer Points possible. To give you a comparison, you only get 150 Gamer Points for going through Call of Duty 2. By giving you all the possible gamer points for simply finishing the game (no game can give you more than 1000 Gamer Points), they remove any reason to replay the game. Pretty silly. Basically, once you finish this game, you're done. Trade it in or put it back on the shelf. Did I mention this game is a full $59.99? Luckily, I bought it used for $35, and they're offering me $33 to trade it in so I only lost 2 bucks on the game. :)

Overall - 6.5

I think too many reviewers are biting on King Kong's cock. There is no way this game deserves a 9. It's competent at best and boring at worst. If you love King Kong for some odd reason, you'll be disappointed in the fact that you don't really play much as King Kong. If you love FPSs, you'll surely be disappointed in this game. If you love adventure games, you don't have much to look forward to except hunting down wooden handles. Basically, avoid this game or simply rent it. It's cool for a day or two, but that's about it.

"Xbox 360 Launch Titles"

So I came across a list of the Xbox 360 game titles available on launch day. Not real impressed. Not a single one of them has impressed me to the point where I can't wait to play it. I'm more excited about the hardware than the software. I think that the new Xbox Live is pretty freakin' awesome. And I like that I can stream video and audio from my PC and MP3 player right off the bat... no modding necessary. Going with wireless controllers was good too. But the games... man. I guess they're not bad, they're just not awesome. Not yet anyway. I'm trying to figure out what to pick up on launch day, and I'm not sure this list has helped me.

ORIGINAL XBOX 360 TITLES:

• Sega's Condemned - Visually unimpressive. Core gameplay looked tired. Very current generationy looking. I don't know why I need to preface the title of the game with the publisher. I don't even think it was developed by Sega. Interest: Low
  
  
• Kameo: Elements of Power - Visually unimpressive. Turned off by the fact that it began development on the original Xbox and it still looks it. Also current generationy, but not as much as Condemned. Interest: Low
  

XBOX 360-ONLY SEQUELS:

• Amped 3 - Wasn't a big fan of 1 and 2, so... The new design style is cool though. I dig the artwork. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Perfect Dark Zero - Didn't play Perfect Dark on N64. Looks unimpressive. Could be the closest to Halo though. I think a lot of people will buy this so it *might* be good for multiplayer. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Project Gotham Racing 3 - Just another racing game. Looks 'OK'. Seems tired though. Interest: Medium
  

AVAILABLE ON OTHER PLATFORMS:

• Call of Duty 2 - Looks damn smooth, like it was running on a High End $2500 PC. Which is fine, but I was hoping that the next generation of consoles would blow away anything available today. Including high end PCs. Still, I did like the smoothness in the framerate (with minor exceptions on big explosions.) If this was an XBOX 360 exclusive, I might have higher interest in it. But knowing that it's availabe on PC where you can use a keyboard and mouse definitely takes away some of the interest I could have had in it. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Gun - Another game where if it was an XBOX 360 exclusive I would have higher interest in the game. Games developed on current gen and next gen systems give me the feeling that they design for the current gen (PS2/Xbox) and then tack on some extras for the Xbox 360. This is opposite of how I feel it was last generation where say Madden or Tony Hawk was developed with the PS2 in mind, and then they'd cut it down to fit on PS1. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Peter’s Jackson’s King Kong - It's a movie game and that brings along a stigma with it that is hard for me to look past. I have heard that Jackson is a bigtime game player and that he personally took his King Kong game to the Beyond Good & Evil designer in order to assure a good game was made. But, c'mon, it's King Kong. :( How good could it be? I do hope it's really awesome though. I'm open to have my opinion changed. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Madden NFL 2006 - ... Interest: Low
  
  
• NBA 2K6 - I really like NBA 2K6 for my current Xbox, and now I'm faced with this 'better' version. Honestly, I'd probably buy it, but not for $59.99. Not when I own the Xbox version already. Maybe if the price drops fast. Interest: Medium
  
  
• NBA Live 2006 - ... Interest: Low
  
  
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 - This game actually looks quite a bit better on Xbox 360 than it does on other platforms. Honestly, so do the other NBA games, but whatever. Anyway, hmmm... but it's a golf game. Not exactly a show stopper. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Need For Speed: Most Wanted - Not a big NFS guy either. Haven't really looked into this a lot. Interest: Low
  
  
• FIFA 2006: Road To The FIFA World - ... Interest: Low, low, loooow.
  
  
• Quake 4 - Have it on PC already. Hey Microsoft, what do you have against the keyboard and mouse? Seriously. With all the FPS games out on console, you'd think either Sony or MS would embrace the keyboard and mouse in the next gereration battle. Can you imagine a first party keyboard and mouse with actual game support. Sony came close with the Linux Kit kb/mouse, but someone needs to officially support a keyboard and mouse in their games. Interest: N/A
  
  
• Tony Hawk: American Wasteland - I bought every single TH game up until this past one. Seriously, this shit is getting old and one thing Neversoft has always sucked at is graphics. And why am I buying a new console if its not to get better graphics? Interest: Low
  

I probably would have picked up Dead of Alive 4 had it made the launch day. I'm hearing that its coming out a week or so later. So I may just wait until then and pick that up. However, I need something on launch day! But what? I don't think I can bring myself to bring home a sports game as my only launch title. I'll probably buckle and get PDZ or Kameo because they're Xbox exclusives. Blech...


Word of the Day: lackadaisical(adj) – Lacking spirit. Unlively. Uninterested. Ex: Many Xbox 360 launch day adopters will no doubt lackadaisically pick up at least one title in order to put their shiny new hardware to some use.

Trivia of the Day: SEGA is derived from SErvice GAmes. It was started by an American, David Rosen, in Japan.