Sargonas.com

So I just got a new toy. Dating someone from Apple has its perks, not only do I have someone incredible awesome to spend my time with, but I was able to get a Time Capsule for my laptop to backup against for about 30% off!

This thing is great. Its a much better secondary wi-fi point for the front half of our house due to its increased strength, and the 802.11n speeds. Also its nice being able to turn time machine back on, and not having to worry about the fact I am backing up against something that I have to physically remember to plug into my laptop anymore, so now its always-on! I am such a geek sometimes… sheesh.

On another note, why is it people who have cats that are “scared of people” always seem to love me? Yet again an antisocial cat thinks I am quite awesome after just a few hours around me. I don’t get it.

I really didnt let this blog die, I just got lazy and unmotivated, thats TOTALLY different. I swear!

So time for the obligatory blog-catchup. In feb I moved to the Bay Area when EA relocated me to the Rupture team, this was a Huge Thing. Then 2 weeks ago I was laid off. This was also a Huge Thing. I am currently waiting to hear back this week on a (hopefully) pending job offer for another team at EARS. If all goes well I can hopefully land that and stop worrying

Living in San Francisco is amazing, and I think I have found my last true Home. This place, is so me. I wish I had moved here years ago. I have some awesome friends here, and some equally awesome room mates I have known for years, and just this weekend started hanging out with someone new who is even more awesome than all of the above, but I wont go into detail on her for fear of jinxing myself

Lastly, the first day I started work out here, Tucker passed away. I hadn’t seen the little guy in weeks, so this really sucked. As soon as as I have my life settled and am in my own house, I plan to get a Yorkie of my own, but it sure wont be another Tucker, he was one of a kind.

So yeah thats the most important bits I guess of the last few months. I’m gonna make an honest effort to get back into updating this regularly, but we will see just how well this actually works. History does not favor my track record.

So I started playing Prince of Persia on the 360 this weekend, and I must say I am incredibly impressed. The game gets rid of the stress and time sink of dying, reloading, frustrations and complications related to it all. You cannot fall to you death in this highly acrobatic based game…. you just get “saved” back to the last area you were standing by Elika. You cannot die in combat, you simply loose a Quick Time Event (you dont even have a health bar!) and when you loose that QTE, Elika simply saves you with a quick magic attack, and the Boss re-heals himself up a good chunk.

Also there are virtually no other beings to fight, just the same 4 bosses, repeatedly in their respective realms. All in all I love it. You can focus on the story they want to tell, the impressive visuals they want to show you (and they are indeed impressive) and the puzzle and acrobatic challenges they want to make you jump though… and thats that. It totally redefines platformers, and I LOVE it!

That’s right! I’m moving, AGAIN!

My new boss, Shawn, has deemed me worthy of a relocation out to San Francisco. However I will be working out of the Rupture office in downtown SF, and not at the main EA campus in Redwood City (this is a good thing really). Current plans look like I will be moving around mid Feb or so.

RAWK!

aaaand I’m back at the condo Its VERY rare for me to be at a gaming event and call it a night at 11pm, but when you factor in the time change, its 2am, and damn it I’m tired!

Today has been an absolute fracking blast. After getting in the hall early around noon (yay media badges!) I spent the two hours of media-only quietness trying things out before the lines got stupid, and saying hi to tons of people who would be otherwise busy the rest of the day. I finally got to meet Spyke, our Beta Producer for Warhammer Online in person, and ran into a random person in the food line who, it turns out, is our EA rep to Wal-Mart down in arkansas. After eating food while ignoring all the chaos around me I teamed up with BananaHammock and ran around to various things, and he introduced me to a handful of people I know but never met in person. After that I bounced around between hanging out with him and E and Kitty, and catching up on old times with The Girls, and watching V3nus destroy every single person who came up against her at the Plantronics booth in UT3. (Even I tried.. it was… tragic..) On day 1 the hall is only open from 2-7, so it wound down fairly quick on the show floor side. I got side tracked and missed out on the Key Note speech by Ken Levine, which made me a sad panda AND forgot all about the Final Boss/Freezepop/Jonathon Coulton concert… grrrr. Instead though I had just as much fun at the GamerDNA party at the hyatt.. Rockband FTW! (speaking of.. i saw rockband 2… OMG!)

Forgive me for the lack of insight into WHAT I saw, as I spent little time playing games and seeing new stuff today. I last was able to be social in person with my gaming community crowd in SEPTEMBER of last year, at WSVG Toronto, so I was really longing to say hi to a lot of people. Tomorrow I plan to “play tourist” and check things out, and flex my Media Pass muscle to skip a bunch of demo lines, heheh. I’ll upload some pics later tonight or tomorrow and link em here when I can.. however I shall be calling it a night now, my feet are absolutely KILLING me.

so day one is not over but winding down. Eating at Fox Sports grill with BananaHammock, Litheon (the poor guy who has to run major nelsons blog) and some others. Just left the Gamerdna party in the hyatt which was a rockband and free beer filled blast, and after this who knows. Day one at the hall was kick ass, a long recap will come sooner or later tonight methinks, once I get back to the hall and can use my own laptop. (I’m carying stales Air for the day right now since its light and fits in my messenger bag, hehe)

God I’m so glad I came on this trip… oh yeah got invited to E’s inafamous PAX Party sunday night, gonna be a blast, will be taking my suitcase with me and getting ferschnickerd, and catching a ride in the morning to the airport with one of the many who will inevitably have to do the same, lol.

So I’m testing a new wordpress app for my iPhone that let’s me post right from it to my blog. All hail the almighty iPhone! Hehehe

I saw *the* most delicious thing ever on ./ today. This following email complaining to someone at MS about the difficulty of installing something from them on windows XP, from 2003.

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Now are you ready for the kicker? the author of this email?
Bill Gates
Yes that’s right, Gates himself sent that email to the XP group. When asked about the email, this was his response. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail.”

This is his last week at MS.. I think I might miss him a little

So my links block on the righ hand side has been re-organized and updated. Anthony’s amusing blog over at http://www.anthonysullivan.net is still there, as is Stales at http://www.angry-cripple.com and I have also added a few more, including two very good friends of mine. One is Maddy, who is, well, quite insane really, you can check hers out at the link there, which is http://www.maddgoddess.com and finaly I have added Caitlin, who is the very reason I got to met and know all the wonderful girls of PMS and my fellow guy gamers in h2o, and so MANY (were talking 4 digits here) friends scattered around the gaming world now hers is http://www.sun3v.com. Check them all out, as I can assure you they are all far more entertaining than mine likely is! haha

Yes, the weekend was indeed insane. Between friday morning and sunday late afternoon there was a fluctuating number of roughly 25-30 people in my house at any given point.

Stale had several other friends on the Penny Arcade forums who had birthdays, so they came to town as well, plus a large contingency of their little social circle from all over the us (plus a poor guy from Ireland who suffered an 8 hour flight and jet lag just to join in!) The house was a nonstop party and it was fun as hell. Well into 2 thousand dollars in alchohol was consumed, enough food to feed a small nation was cooked in cycles regularly and destroyed in minutes each time. (Chris makes a glorious cheesecake that I would happily move to Seattle to be able to have all the damn time!)

Fortunately there were no casualties of war this time, like last, where one of Dan’s couches was utterly destroyed by the projectile contents of an over intoxicated stomach, however I found out after the fact Kovak did have a little mishap all over the wood floor of my downstairs office, but it was quickly cleaned up (although the carpet outside the door of the room, at the base of the stairs does indeed bear some battle scars, come to think of it.)

Good times were had by all, there was more rockband going on that I think Harmonix ever envisioned, tons of Smash brothers and Mario Kart on the Wii up in the game room, plenty of pool (and weird schenanigans ON the pool table), tons of drinking games (the concept of Zoom still makes my head hurt) and I also learned when trying to find peace and quiet at 6am when everyone else is up still yelling, sleeping in the back seat of a Honda Accord coupe is NOT a good solution.

Then there was my actual birthday on monday… good lord. I must say, I was not looking forward to my birthday this year. It is the first time in 7 years (since the beginning really) that my birthday did not fall right on MML week, so I was not going to be home in Louisville with a few HUNDRED friends around, plus another 1,500 more gamers as well for several days. It was just me, and work, and Dan and Summer around and that was it, I have to admit i was really not planning to enjoy my birthday. However, Dan surprised me with the most insanely awesome present ever that morning at work, two front row seats to see Eddie Izzard live tonight! There is someone very special I would like to take more than anyone else in the world, but sadly she is not available.. but its ok, a great time shall still be had. Also, my facebook profile is setup to text me when someone writes on my wall, I left this on because at MOST I get 2-3 wall posts a week, if Im lucky. I had to turn the damn feature OFF yesterday. I’ve never felt so appreciated by so many people, my wall was literally destroyed with an untold number of posts, as was my myspce profile (by mostly the same people, LOL!) It certainly cheered me up a ton. Thanks to EVERYONE who left me a message on Aim, Myspace, Facebook, voicemail, email, and everything else. I love being reminded how many friends I have scattered all over the country, and the world, thanks to my love of gaming and all my traveling related to it. Its kind of cool to know I could be stranded just about anywhere in the US and know I have great friends not far away in some odd direction

Wohoo! I have overhauled my site as you can tell, if you check it regularly. An entirely new Theme for starters, which was hard for me. I LOVE my old web 2.0 looking, rounded cornered aero stylish black with green and gray. After all, green and black are my favorite colors. However I decided to go with a widget capable theme so that all that nav bar stuff on the right no longer had to be hand coded by me whenever I wanted to add a feature.

This theme, obivously, is. It was hard convincing myself to get away from the green and black, but its really growing on me more and more, and the response from my friends who have been following my site has been universally positive as well.

Also I added a new module that will show a random pic from my picasa gallery, as well as my current twitter feed. Along with that, when I make a new post from now on, an entry will be generate for me to twitter, which by default, will also go into my facbook now! LOL Then it will of course show up here on the site, come to think of it, in the twitter box.

Good lord, I just might cause the internet to fold in upon itself and implode, I should maybe rethink this plan…

One of my favorite sites to check in on daily is Garfield Minus Garfield. They simply take a Garfield strip that includes just Jon and Garfield, rip out any images of Garfield, and you are left with the crazy ramblings of a lonely depraved man..

www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Today’s I especially like… kinda feels like me today

For anyone who cares, I have a new blog up at http://dnd.sargonas.com which follows the adventures of the D&D 4th Edition campaign I am partaking in, with blogs from the point of views of the characters. Check it out if you are into that sort of thing.

Yeah so two days ago I got pulled over on GA 400 by an Alpharetta cop on a motorcycle, for doing 70 in a 65 zone.. what the hell? Its GA 400.. if your doing under 80 your lucky to not get plowed down by someone in the right lane doing 90… and here I get zinged for doing 70.. and being passed by 20 cars in the 3 lanes left of me!

So he pulls me over, walks up to the passenger side of my car, and with out wasting time hands his Laser gun though my passenger window and says to me “I clocked you doing 70mph.. if you look the left number on this readout is your speed, the right is the distance from you to me.” And I have just enough time to read its 70 alright, and before I can even react he pulls it out the window and says “I’ll be citing you for 5mph over the limit sir, one moment please” and walks back to his bike and fills out the form. Watching him in the mirror I can see he going rather quick about it, as he aparently has most of the form pre-filled out, and just had to add in the info related to me. He walks back up, asks me to sign the notice of reciept, and hands me my copy, says good day and walks off. Whole thing lasted a ridiculous 7 minutes… dont know what the hell the story was here with the drive though pull over but whatever…

So my birthday is in a week and two days, if anyone cares. Dan is having a ton of people into town because between the 21st and the 24th he has 4 friends with birthdays, including me.. should be good times, assuming anyone here remembers I have one too, heh. Aside from that though I expect to spend my actual birthday alone.. I had really big plans this year too.. I was gona take “her” to vegas for a 4 day weekend…

So the subject of my previous post and I had dinner the night I wrote that. We had a really good talk. In short my main theory was right, the sudden actual commitment scared her shortly after realizing it had happened, and she got scared. I cant fault her for that, it happens. At least she was wonderful enough to sit down with me and have a great conversation over it, I walked away from it feeling very good about things, at least, I felt up beat and not destroyed, heh.

Really I was doing quite well, untill the car trip home. 6 hours alone in the car with my thoughts was rough, the first few hours went pretty well actually, untill XM-47 decided, for the first time in my own knowledge, to play some Placebo… her favorite, and that… sucked..

Up in louisville has been hell…. the majority of what I had planned to fill the three days around the time of my sisters party was meant to show her around and have fun, naturaly all of that is no more, so I’m bored out of my mind and lonely, because I intentionally didnt tell anyone I was coming home, so they wouldnt want to hang out with me and divide up too much of my time. Now of course everyone is busy on the holiday weekend and has no time for me. The few things I do go out and do, all I can do the entire fucking time is think about if she was along, what it would be like, where we would go, what I would show her next about my hometown, etc. I spent an hour going though 12 boxes in the garage, trying to condense down all this crap I have accumulated since high school and left home, stuff from living here, in my first apt, Chicago, etc. Going though a lot of old things made me reminisce, and then wish she was around so I could show her all the fun little odds and ends of my childhood.

And now I have a new problem these last two nights I have never had to deal with before, and I dont even know how. She has managed to somehow invade the privacy of my dreams. What is weird is that in them its not some self created lie where we are all happy and things are how they were and i wake up sad, but instead, things are as they are now, but worse.. they are vague to remember, but I think the general gist of each one is shes around, things seem like they are turning for the good, and then suddenly she will knock me down a few pegs and I wake up feeling like shit, and unable to fall back to sleep for a half hour or so. This has never happened before and thrown me for a bit of a loop…  I can honestly say its taken me to the point I am afraid to sleep anymore.. these are not thoughts I want to have. Mostly because she herself would never do these kinds of things to me.. so why the hell am I thinking them..

I’m going to skip the boring and trite “omg its been forever since ive posted.. blah blah blah” shit and get to what i need to vent in the open..

 I’ve spent several months involved with someone. The exact context is debatable. are we dating.. are we not, to what extent. We never really discussed and let it sit as a moot point, we were happy with what we had, what else mattered? Then about a week and a half ago she informs me at dinner, that she is indeed now my girlfriend. What happened in her mind to make this change I do not know, but it was a monumental one for us and something important. She was very clear on the statement of this, actualy having made it while i was on the phone with my father, who overheard it and had a chuckle over it. The rest of the day was quite pleasant, and late that night she makes another monumental leap, informing me that she does indeed love me. For the next several days things between the two of us had a much different context, there was obviously more in depeth, heartfelt emotion than before.

Now I am familiar with the concept of such a huge leap as this, after so long of the prior, making someone uneasy one morning, and this is ok with me, if thats all that happened, I could understand this, and work with it. This girl in question, sits me down for a conversation two days ago, and asks to back out of a long planned weekend trip she was taking with me to my hometown this weekend… and tells me that she needs some time to think, she isnt happy with how her life is going right now, too much chaos, too much confusion, and that “we” only complicated things. She needs to sit down and look at what her future holds, and that really, shes not sure there is room for an “us” in ir. I understand this concept, on its own. But how can someone then continue on to act like “that conversation” the sunday prior never happened. And when I ask about it, she tells me i was mistaken… I must have taken some off handed comment and twisted it in my head into hearing what I wanted to hear. She swears she never would have said that, I am clearly mistaken.

This is hurtfully insulting. I can understand her kinda having a quasai panic attack. The “oh shit” moment where that casual relationship that had no expectations became a commited, locked in deal. I understand this, I have BEEN THERE. But to tell me that, I know DAMN well she remembers this conversation, there is no question in my mind about it. Its insulting, hurtfull. I can accept if she doesnt feelt hat way anymore, I can accept if she has a change of heart. But to pretend it never happened, and to tell me to my face I am imagining it… is just… insulting.

 To make things better, today she chats with me about a few things, and then proceedes, out of the blue, to inform me “I’ve changed my mind.. I will come along this weekend”. This is something my brain is totaly unprepared for.. so i hesitate for a second, and simply tell her “ok I am now confused” which is responded with “i’m so mean… im just kidding!”

My only conclusion is that she somehow, feels the need to drive a wedge between us, because we had such an easy, understanding seperation between our two highly intertwined lives, that she feels she must completely make me want to alienate her in order to put her mind at ease… thats all I can assume.

No, no.. not the PBS childrens show about math from the late 80’s and early 90’s… Im talking about how I am back to square one. My xbox 360 has a fried hard drive. Its tossing up a single red ring segment with an E 67 error. Microsoft’s KB article on it states this is one of the three possible hard drive errors. This particular one is the worst.. and its accompanied with a grinding, scratching sound when the system first fires up. In other words, 2 years of saved files, game data, and 7,000 gamerpoints worth of work are gone. (well i still have the gamer points, but the WORK is gone) the only thing that was on the memory card I have was my profile, and my Mass Effect and Rockband info… I am so sick I could throw up over this.. it really is heart wrenching. I know this is somewhat laughable that I could be so upset over something like this, but from my point of view, this is two years worth of hard work and effort I have put into my biggest hobby.. *sigh* and I was going to buy a new 120gb drive soon and port all my data over.. guess I waited too long huh :\

I’m taking up a collection for donations to buy a new 120gb drive… I need to collections cause quite frankly at the moment I cant afford one.. *sigh again* if you feel generous, click the link below… I’m going to sit in the dark and cry now.

So on black friday I decided to go with my dad and look at cars. When I come home next month I was planning to buy one, since my eclipse most assuredly needs to be retired, horrendously so. I was looking at a 350z (pricey end of my range) or a jeep sahara unlimited ( the decked out 4 door wranglers) and wanted to look at some numbers and get some ideas based on lease rates and trade in value on my eclipse. Instead, I ended up with this….

  Now then, can you actually believe this is a Honda? yeah.. that was my reaction. This is the new (as in, been on the road for about a month) 2008 Accord V6 Coupe. I have always liked Hondas for their reliability, but they are not the “me” kind of sporty little car. This however, changes that. It just plain looks awesome and has every single feature that they make as an option on the accord coupe,  and has 268hp, which, believe it or not, far out classes the old v6 in my ‘00 eclipse GT by about 75hp. (not that I’m all that hung up on engine power, but by god you can feel it in this thing.) It also has a lot of nifty features, like their VCS system that manages the number of cylinders being used in the engine to conserve fuel economy. (ie. if your running on a constant speed on the express way, it shuts down the rear bank so you are only using the front 3, and when coasting to a stop or doing low powerd lane changes or merging, it adjusts to 4, etc) Some of the other nice things is that I finally have XM built into my car, no more using that damn tape adapter for that cheap ass roady I have in my eclipse, heh. I’m happy. Its not at all what I expected to end up with in the least, but I dont regret it one bit at all. its an awesome car, I ended up saving myself some serious chunk of money in comparison to what I was looking at as well, even though I don’t at all feel like I gave up on anything. Along with that, this model, the EX-L V6 when fully loaded out comes in around 32,000 give or take… before you factor in my trade in value on the eclipse… mine was 26,500 or so. It’s good to have my dad’s connections

Oh yeah, here is a stock photo of the interior of mine for those who care.

Only major difference being mine is an automatic, not a stick, aside from that  it’s the same. One thing I love about the interrior of honda’s is that they use a much softer, nicer leather than that viny-like crap that was in my eclipse, meh. Also there is a lot more of that brushed silver metallic trim than it looks like in the pic, which accents the black nicely, you just kind of loose that effect in the glare of the pic. Oh yeah, and it has an aux port for my iphone or any other mp3 player…  thats hot right there Been wanting something like that for a good while now!

So… another post about guitar hero 3. You know, the game I ranted on endlessly about for two or 3 posts and several twitters?

Hm yes, well you see, when the gleeful joy of the early adoption lust has worn down, and you have a moment to sit back and reflect on what you just did, things always take on a new light. As they say, hind sight is 20/20. I for one kind of wish I had been wearing my glasses when I first took at look at Guitar Hero 3. To be honest I did give it a few low marks, well I should say, I made a basic attempt to tone down my praises with a few counter comments at best. In either case, in reflection I didn’t do that enough. I beat the game on Medium, which was for the most part easy. However now I have gone back and taken a stab at Hard and Expert, and let me tell you, here is where they fucked up. Guitar Hero 1 and 2 flowed when you played, even when you worked up in difficult. When you played those songs, even the ones that were tweaked for maximum concentration and dexterity, you still felt like you were playing a guitar, with a natural flow to it. Medium on GH3 felt the same way, so in reality, it was nothing I was looking for, or comparing. It was all a subconcious understanding that I was happy. However now that I took a stab back at Hard and Expert I have learned something, Neversoft said fuck that noise, and just decided to stick notes wherever it looked like it would cramp your fingers and be considered harder.They gave no thought whatsoever to the concept of music and flow.

These are base instincts to Harmonix, a dev studio that has an entire employment roster engaged in one or another personal band. Not a week goes by in the Cambridge area where SOMEONE from the studio is playing a show with their band. Neversoft I think simply does not have the innate understanding Harmonix did to get this concept. It is most evident in the expert songs. You do not feel like you are playing a more complex version of a song, trying to really rock it out like a pro. You feel like your fingers are playing a torturous version of DDR in a futile attempt to keep time with a pack of drunken riverdancers. These are not words based on my inability to beat these songs, just because its hard I dont feel this way. Even the hardest songs for me on 2 and 1 i felt like i was playing real music. This simply restates the obvious, this is an unproven, and unwelcome genre for Neversoft to dabble in, and that Rockband, when it hits the stores next week will triumph over all. (Well goes on sale that is, as it is already in stores, and I set eyes on my own copy of the bonus bundle in person at my regular Gamestop today, although the Manager, in awe as much as his staff and him are of me and my job, had no desire to loose his job by letting my have my copy early, heh. In any case, I sincerely apologize for leading my select few readers who care about my blog astray into thinking the game was a triumph of success for the franchise. It is more like the Episode II:Attack of the Clones of the series. 

Now then, Assassins Creed. I know I said I would reserve judgement untill I have completed this game, and I still intend to, but I will tell you this.It is a rental. It will be the first game ever for the 360 that I intend to trade in when I complete it. I never trade in games, under any situation. I simply deny the fact that such an option even exists to me at a store level. However this one, is being sent back in for sure. If I ever wish to revisit it, I will bring it up in my GameFly queue. The game is NOT bad, and I AM finishing it however I see little to no replay value in it at this time. The rest I will save upon completion, unless I return it to Gamestop before then, and apply its credit towards something more substantial. 

Lastly, there is a copy of Mass Effect at this time sitting at our house awaiting Dan and I. Ok, well, mostly Dan in the beginning, but in either case, don’t hate us too much, we cant help the fact we know people.

5 years ago this week (today actually) Xbox live launched. Since then it has evolved a lot, a WHOLE lot, but its still Xbox Live and the are still gamer tags. Everyone comment and share a memorable live moment, favorite feature, or how about the turning point where you realized your soul was irrevocably sold to Live, or to the advancement of your gamer score

So today I think I have been over indulged in awesome geek stuff! First off Assassins Creed came out today, more on that later as I go into a preliminary first impression on it. 

As to the other piece of hotness, today our first half of our new computers from corporate arrived today. This was, in my opinion, the better half of the batch. Brand spanking new Apple iMacs! They are the 20 inch systems, decked out with all the options on that level and 2gigs of ram. They are HOT HOT HOT. I finally have an apple system to use on a regular basis and I love it. The only downside is that I am going to need to do some serious work to get used to this keyboard it has. Its sexy as hell but I almost have to relearn how to type all over. It shouldn’t be to bad though.Now then, Assassins Creed… With any game hyped to the degree that AC was, you almost accept it defacto that the game is going to be less than stellar. To be honest, as much as I was looking forward to it, I was also equally expecting to be let down, although fully anticipated enjoying the game none the less. Now granted, I am only about 3 or so hours into the game, so I will be the first to state that I have little grounds to bash or even support the game at this point. Consider these ‘preliminary’ thoughts on the game at best, and not my final review. I think Gabe from Penny-arcade said it best with his comment in yesterdays front page blog “Untill you have sat though the credits and watched it all.. you aren’t qualified to say SHIT about this game.”They were very closed lipped about the allegations at this game taking place in the future, AND the past. These sayings, which grew as time wore on, and Ubisoft seemed hesitant to confirm, but also refused to deny, became a known fact, albeit an undetailed one at launch.  I wont ruin the surprise for you, but I will say this. Having kept the plot, and the ‘future story arc link’ in the dark was actually a cool thing ™. It added a little bit of a twist that made you go “well damn, thats neat” in a day and age where major surprises like that in games are rare, and generally only used in the ending, as everything is over advertised in order to sell product these days.

The game does indeed fall short of some of the hyped expectations, but when I say it falls short, what I am saying is, it is your average, standard “holy shit this is awesome” blockbuster hit, rather than the end all gaming experience to solve man kinds problem once and for all, that Ubi made it out to be. They game starts off as well with another unique feature. In most games as you progress you learn new abilities, get new gear, and work towards being the ultimate badass that particular game builds you up to be, that of which you generally don’t even know 100% what you will become until you get there. In AC you start off the first 15 minutes of the game fully geared out with all your abilities. They give you a seductive taste of what you CAN be, and eventually will. Then you are stripped of all of this, knocked down the ladder of progress, and have to work your way back up. To me, I feel this is a novel and refreshing approach at the whole progression concept.  I can see peoples fears that the game may become repetitive in later stages, and I have yet to play enough to reach that point, so I am reserving judgement for that until such time. However as of right now I think I, personally, will not be affected by this issue, from my initial experiences. Then again however, each person will look at this game differently, and I could very well be a deviation from the norm. In either case I will withhold any judgement on that aspect until such time as I am worthy of it. 

Lastly I want to take a moment to tout my buddies over at 360voice.com. Trapper and Steve (ChangeAgent and Fatty Chubbs) have been working hard on a new thing they rolled out, their new Gamerscore Challenge system. It allows you to build a “challenge” to see who can earn the most gamer points in a given number of days. You invite your friend whom you wish to partake, and once everyone in joined up, the initiator launches it, and off you go. At the end of that time the person who acquired the most gamerpoints during that time frame wins. Right now its purely in beta and for fun, but they have partnered up with Old Spice (the backers of the Xbox Live Challenge campaign) to provide prizes and awards for challenge winners in the future, so keep an eye on it. Also fell free to check out the challenge Stale, h2o Banana Hammock and I are in, which I am kicking ass in (as of the time of this writing, hehe). Check it out here.

So I finally got my hands on Eye of Judgement yesterday, thanks to the alert, watchful eyes of Stale. It is impressive, and I see great potential. However the inital mechanics were, clumsy, and I am still learning the proper flow of the game, as well as the true strategy of play. Once I pin down on the strategy, and my lack therof, and better understand the game flow, I think the rest will kinda lock into place and it wont be so bad. All in all im not really disappointed, I just need to give it some time.

Time however is something I don’t really have to give it… Assassins creed comes out next wednesday… I’m currently deep in the throngs of pokemon hunting on my DS, rock band hits stores a week after assassins creed, and mass effect lands at the same time.

And thats just November….

So guitar Hero3 came out yesterday. It is great, indeed it is glorious.

From the very beginning it is clear that Harmonix is not involved in the game, and this is in both good, and not so good, ways. Harmonix is an awesome group, and while they were partners with RedOctane in the Guitar hero I and II endeavors, and RedOctane owned most of the rights to most things,  I will forever think of the Guitar Hero series as a Harmonix game. The changes are subtle but there, most are for the good, but there are a few things that annoy me. For starters, the entire game has a, well, Tony Hawk feel about it. No surprise there, it WAS made by Neversoft after all. My biggest gripe, and its purely cosmetic and just a personal thing, is the bastardization of Judy Nails. She was the character I always used, because in games I and II she could have been a digital clone of Ariel. It’s not that I have some sick twisted facination with my best friend (well ok maybe a little, but its purely sexual attraction, nothing weird) but simply if I am going to stare at the same person rocking around on stage for hours on end, I want it to be someone who’s easy on the eyes.

However in 3, when Neversoft got their grimy little skate board axle greased fingers on Judy, they seemed to have, well I dont know. Its like the squarshed her down a few inches and plumped her out oddly. Her chest is now 2 sizes two big for her body, shes a few inches shorter than before, and now oddly out of proportion because of it, her face seems far too chubby for the rest of her body because of this, and they beefed up her arms and legs to look rather creepy. All in all looking at her in the selection menu made me go running to the next character option, which was Lars Umlaut, and as we all know hes none to easy on the eyes either, but it was an optical reprieve for me none the less.

Aside from that I am so far happy with the game, the song selection so far is kick ass, and when I was unlocking extra tracks I found Kaiser Chiefs “Ruby” which just about made my day. I was disapointed to see there is no Freezepop songs for the first time, but this is none to surprising because they are personal friends of the Harmonix crew, and likely kept their loyalties to them and Rock Band. The song selection so far is great though, but I wont bore with details on that since its highly documented elsewhere.

Thew new multiplayer battle mode is nice with the twist of having “attacks” to use, instead of star power. Their concept of using this mode against 3 “bosses” made of famous musicians is also a nice change for the campaign mode. It eases a new player into the concept for online play, as well as breaks up the monotany of “beat this song… now this one.. ok good now this one” which is otherwise the only aspect of the campaign mode. One other nice addition is that the cut scenes between venue upgrades got a small but awesome tweak. Gone is the simple graphic of a map with your tour bus driving from point A to point B. In its place is a full cut scene, with a nice artistic twist of no vocal audio. It shows things for example, of after the back yard gig, a guy walks up, shows a business card, throws a ad for a battle of the bands competition in you face, flashes some money and smiles. In other words, you just got a manager and your first gig. The animation style is on par with the guitar hero look and feel, and the lack of spoken dialog is actualy nice, plus there is some good visual comedy in each one, and they are each 10-15 seconds at most to keep it short and simple. Again, this was a good twist that broke up the same ole same ole of the past games, without really changing anything.

All in all I give guitar Hero 4 out of 5 stars, now if you will excuse me… I need to go beat Slash into the ground so I can jack his avatar and rock that pimp ass hat he wears myself.

It has been weighed, it has been measured, it has been judged….

IM-FUCKING-POSSIBLE TO FIND!!!

Ok so Eye of Judgement came out today for the PS3. Its the first PS3 game ive been looking forward to actually. Hihgly acclaimed by the guys over at Penny-arcade, my personal heroes when it comes to gaming information. Its like any other CCG card game, but you play it online with your PS3 against others, using the new PS3 camera (included) on a special 9 square mat where you do battle with your creatures and spells on cards to take control of the board (5 squares wins).

The cards are made by the same folks who make Magic: The Gathering, and are recognized by the PS Eye using a special encoded barcode on them.  On screen the artwork comes to life, with a 3d rendering of the creature of your card appearing to stand on said card.

Needless to say, being the afficianado of card games that I am, I was psyched about this. This game was not preorderable, it seemed no one was taking them. 5 Gamestops, a wal-mart,  best buy, amazon.com, bestbuy.com and 3 google searches later I know why. Each retail store, no matter who they were, got ONE copy today… one… uno… everywhere online is showing backordered in terms for 4-8 weeks… I was devastated… until I found a copy on buy.com. They claim to be instock and shipping in 1-2 business days. So I ordered a copy… heres to hoping I have it in by next wednesday or so to satiate my yearning hunger

So i have become hooked with twitter (www.twitter.com) and its a hell of a lot of fun. Basically, you sign up and set it up how you like. When the mood suits you, you can send in a mini blog (max 140 characters) via a text message, an IM to them, or on the web site. Once its been submitted, everyone who has elected to follow your blogs will get a text message, IM, or email, based on their personal settings with the updated entry inside. Its a lot of fun because it changes the whole mindset on blogging.  Rather than sit down and plan out an entry in a journal type point of view, it encourages a person to randomly send off whats on their mind at that moment, say your stuck in a meeting and something funny happens you want to share, or your in line at starbucks and want to vent about the morons behind the counter.. you get the idea. Its fun.. if you want to track me after you have signed up, just search for my usual name… sargonas, and add me!