Metal Gear Interlude

The worst part about being a gamer of particularly single player games is that there's ALWAYS more games for you to play. I've recently wrapped up Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, and while 4 is waiting for me I've also potentially got Metal Gear 1 and 2 (the originals) as options and I'm still in the middle of Phantom Hourglass. And then there's the idea that maybe I should play something between the Metal Gear games? I still haven't played Heavy Rain (maybe another interactive movie as a break isn't a great idea), Uncharted 2, I've got a bunch of Sonic games I've been wanting to replay, Spirit Trackers is waiting for me, as is the XBLA version of Banjo Kazooie, my friend lent me Wario Lan Shake it but I don't have video cables for my wii right now. I'm sure I've also got a bunch of random GBA/GC/Xbox games that have yet to be finished.

I especially find it difficult to replay old games unless there's a new one coming out or something because I feel like I'm neglecting the unplayed (I've never played) games I have.

Final Fantasy XIII - First Impressions

Immediately before playing the awaited 13th installment in the main Final Fantasy series (I consider it the 12th actually, fuck XI) my brother warned me about his experience with the first couple hours: button mashing. This had me worried, I hate it when games/movies/TV shows waste my time with pointless crap. Furthermore, some of the reviews of the game aren't quite as stellar as I'd hoped.

Upon starting up the game one thing is incredibly clear: the graphics are amazing. I'm only two hours in and this is easily the best looking game I've ever seen. Hell, that's actually noticeable after the first two minutes. Not only are the graphics incredible but it has the visual style to match. All the characters, enemies and environments are absolutely breathtaking. The opening cut scene is really visually stimulating and action packed.

The game manages to pretty quickly drop you into the action and throw you into a battle sequence. And here is where the button mashing I was warned about comes in. While the battle system seems like it will eventually get quite interesting it doesn't exactly start out like that, I won't go into much detail about it but there is a lot of simply hitting X without thought. All the battles for the first couple hours are like that. The thing is though, it's not nearly as tedious as it sounds.

A huge thing that Final Fantasy XIII excels at is game mechanics, which is actually the most important aspect to a game for me at this point. Every thing is really quick and moves extremely fluidly, from the battle system to just walking around. There's almost no load times. The battles are so quick and actually look so good that I hardly even cared how repetitive they actually are. They actually show you your time at the end of the battle and you get ranked based on how quickly you win. Most battles end up being less than 20 seconds, I had a couple that were three. When you get to your first real battle two hours in, it is much more entertaining (still only took me 1:30) and it has me very excited for the rest of the game.

Obviously though it is pretty stupid that they do this. All the first battles are extremely pointless, you get completely healed at the end of each one and you gain no experience. There is no doubt that this could have been handled a lot better.

The story so far is quite intriguing and I'm pretty excited to get to the rest of this supposedly 60 hour long game.

Another thing that I'm enjoying so far about this game is its return to the roots of Final Fantasy: the babes. The first one had it's scantily clad White Mage, the fourth had its random dancers and this one has

It's not really a new addition to the Final Fantasy series, but I just can't help being amazed that despite the circumstances of the story there never seems to be a shortage of hair dressers or styling products. Don't get me wrong, it's great to play a game where the main character is a total babe, but it makes the overall story so much less believable when everyone always looks like they just had a makeover. It'll be nice when games of this cinematic quality give characters different clothing throughout the story and maybe dress them like they're in a battle to save the world instead of making them look like they're going to the bar on Friday night.

Why The Spectacular Spider -Man is so awesome

Cursed

That right guys, I've been cursed. I can't recall any recent encounters with crazy old women, so I'm clueless on possible causes at this point.
This curse has really put me out of commision for the past few weeks though. Straight from shocking audition failure to the pain of wisdom teeth removal directly followed by the joyful experience of tonsillitis where it too much to drink water (next time I'm going to see a doctor much, much sooner by the way) and then onto car troubles resulting in my vehicle being out of commision for at least a couple weeks. So yeah, food isn't such a problem any more, but getting too and from school suddenly is...

INFAMY OF INFAMIES!!

CAN THIS BE THE END

OF OUR BELOVED

CRUSADER??

WILL BRENT

WAX SERIOUS?

FOR THE SAKE

OF OUR HERO,

LET'S THINK POSITIVELY!!!

BUT IT LOOKS BAD,

VERY BAD!

HOW CAN WE WAIT

UNTIL NEXT TIME..

SAME BRENT-TIME...

SAME BRENT-CHANNEL!!?

Smallville, you suck.

This summer I took on the challenge of catching up on the long running TV series, Smallville. I had never watched it before, but it's about Superman. SUPERMAN. He's fucking awesome. Anyway, the series started off pretty shitty but eventually got better, to what I thought was "good" but I'm starting to have second thoughts. The only way I can explain it is I'd been exposed to so many terrible episodes that by the time it got decent it seemed fantastic in comparison.

About a week ago I finished watching Justice League for probably the 7th time, and now as I'm finishing up Superman the Animated Series I've arrived on "Superman's Pal," an episode about little Jimmy Olsen and I'm reminded again of how incredibly stupid Smallville is.

Smallville Season 8 spoilers by the way. Like, season finale style spoilers.

I'm not gonna go into detail here, but at the end of the season Jimmy Olsen has relationship problems which leads to him developing a drug addiction, that he gets over a couple episodes later, and in the following episode (season finale) he ends up being murdered by a jealous super villain who is competing with him for a girl.

Let's go over this again:
Little Jimmy Olsen
develops a drug addiction
and is then MURDERED
by a super villain.

Oh, and guess who does it? Who's the jealous super villain who's fighting over a girl with little Jimmy Olsen? You wanna know, right?

DOOMSDAY

Now that the shock is residing, I should probably clear up that it wasn't technically Doomsday, but more so the Jekyll to his Hyde. See, on Smallville they feel the need to completely ruin villains for some reason, so Doomsday actually changes between two people, one who is a normal human, a paramedic in fact, and well, Doomsday. Oh, he's also the son of Zod for some fucked up reason, came to earth in the same meteor shower as Clark Kent but without a ship somehow. ANYWAY, Clark refuses to defeat Doomsday because his other half is a good guy, so he does something fancy to split them apart and the human dude is the one who kills Jimmy. Kinda smart in a way, but also pretty damn ridiculous.

I was listening to the commentary on an episode of Superman and Bruce Timm (producer, writer, artist for the DC Animated Universe) said when he told DC he wanted to kill a character in Superman and suggested Jonathan Kent they told him he could do it as long as they bring him back.
Sure, it was 10 years ago, but why the hell does the far superior show get restricted on these kinds of things? Smallville killed JIMMY OLSEN and they will not be bringing him back (oh, Jonathan Kent died in season 5 by the way).

When I think back on how terrible the first few seasons are I wonder why DC ever let this show continue. Then I remember that they are owned by a larger corporation who loves to cash in on Superman, stupid teenagers and generally anyone with horrible taste.

Bedouin Soundclash Part 2: Hippie Jam Bands are Stupid.

Sunday morning at the Regina Folk Fest had a workshop called Get a move on: Fat beats and funky rhythms with Socalled (host), Bedouin Soundclash, Pacifika. I had no idea what it was going to be, but it turned out to be a bunch of members from different bands jamming for an hour. There was a couple bass players, an accordion player, fiddle, trumpet, saxophone, a couple female singers, and of course, Jay, the singer/guitarist of Bedouin Soundclash.

They turn on a drum machine and everyone kinda jams around that. It was kinda cool for a bit, but after about 40 minutes I realized how incredibly dumb it is and was reminded why my band doesn't do any live jams. It is just way too dull and unstructured to be very entertaining for anyone but the people doing it.

And then there's Jay Malinowski again. Here's the thing about Jay: he doesn't really jam out or do any crazy guitar solos. Maybe it's because he's from a band that doesn't suck, or maybe because he's not that kind of guitar player, who knows. Throughout the first jam, which lasted about 40 minutes, he mostly threw in some cool rythym guitar parts every once in a while and a couple neat vocal skats. For a good portion of it he actually sat down and had a cigarette. After that jam was over, he took over the microphone and started singing Amazing Grace (it was Sunday morning after all). The band jammed over that for a bit, then that one kinda ended and again Jay started up a song. This time it was Can't Hurry Love, and it was fantastic. Again, the whole band jammed over it and it was very well received. The audience clearly had a much better reaction to the last couple songs than anything else they did. I wish they had done that kind of thing for the whole hour instead of spending the first 40 minutes masturbating in front of a crowd.

I'm finally getting to see them in concert on Tuesday. Last time I saw them I wasn't really familiar with their songs, and it was still awesome, so I'm really excited for this concert. Expect a review of that later. Check out part 1 here.

Bedouin Soundclash Part 1

Bedouin Soundclash is playing the Regina Folk Festival this weekend and while I wasn't able to catch their full performance tonight I was able to catch something else they were a part of this afternoon. First of all, I gotta say that never have I seen so many hippies. I must have seen 50 people carrying around long boards. Anyway, on one of the side stages was a "workshop" entitled Nico on the Night Train: Travel Songs Hosted by Bedouin Soundlcash. It turned out just be the singer from Bedouin, Jay Malinowski, and members of three other bands taking turns playing travel songs on acoustic guitar. Surprisingly, Nico on the Night Train was not one of the songs played.

This one hour session was, for the most part, actually quite boring. Jay's songs were clearly the highlight, and he wasn't even playing songs the audience knew. The first song he played was called Life is a Gun and I found it quite catchy. The second was called Narceritos, which is what they call the smugglers who bring drugs up from Central America to Vancouver, and it was about a friend of his in Vancouver who either uses or works at a safe house for shooting up. Both were totally new songs, and the bass player informed me they were from Jay's upcoming solo record. You can listen to demos of them on his myspace. Definitely on the top of my anticipated albums now. He finished up the set with 12:59 Lullaby, one of Bedouin's hit singles.

Tomorrow I'm off to another "workshop" called Get a move on: Fat beats and funky rhythms with Socalled (host), Bedouin Soundclash, Pacifika. Who knows what this one will turn out to be, but it better be funky. Tuesday night I will of course be seeing them in Medicine Hat. Expect blog posts about both.