Apparently the Ninteno Wii has been hacked. The only reason this is really news is because it hadn't been done up to this point. The Wii isn't a terribly powerful system in any respect so all this really does is open up the possibility of creating some amusing home-made games using the Wii-mote, little more.
In other news, I finally unlocked every Achievement in Mass Effect. Go me.
This is kind of random, but I recently read a news story where a 25 year old man and his 20 year old brother both drowned in a river because they didn't know how to swim. Now, at the risk of sounding like an insensitive asshole, how does one not know how to swim by the time they're 20. Even if you were never taught by anyone, I feel like a combination of natural instinct, embarrassment, and curiosity would be enough of a motivator to learn. Maybe this isn't as natural as I think it is since I've grown up around swimming pools, but I still think it's weird...
Well, the New York Times has named its Game of the Year and the winner is Mass Effect. Seeing how it was one of only 2 games that I bought this year, I would have to agree. Also, a new Ninja Gaiden 2 trailer hit the net recently and while it looks like more of the same, I can't really argue with that since the first one was so good...
Well, there's not much going on today but I did find an interesting article about the various presidential candidates' views on video game legislation, an informative and at times hilarious read. Also, Bungie defeated the FragDolls in their most recent Humpday Challenge, which makes me a little bit sad. Lastly, I found this video of a hilarious Super Mario Brothers hack. Check it out.
It seems that whenever children do violent and stupid things, the first thing that the media points to is video games. For example, the recent Mortal Kombat story. From what I understand, a girl and her boyfriend were baby-sitting her younger sister and she pretty much stood there and watched while her boyfriend beat the kid to death. Now, I'm not a betting man, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that the popular media isn't gonna latch on to the fact that the guy was drunk and a trained martial artist. Instead, they're going to say, "Oh, Mortal Kombat made him do it. Ban violent video games." I hope I'm wrong, but from the title of the article, I doubt it.
In less grim, but equally stupid news, it appears that
Activision won't allow its Guitar Hero III controllers to work with Rock Band without monetary compensation. I understand that it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to let your hardware work with your competitor's software, but making consumers buy different guitar peripherals for different games on the same system is ridiculous and doesn't exactly win the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere. Activision is painting itself into a corner next to EA with crap like this.
So, I finished watching Gundam SEED Destiny and compared to the first season, it's kind of terrible. It's good for what it is, but you can tell that they wanted to end the series after the first season and somebody more important was like "No, we want more money." Then they had to pull some terribly contrived BS out of nowhere. But, they did good with what they had to work with.
As a side note, this Resident Evil movie teaser shows some promise.
So, I finished watching Gundam SEED over the weekend because I got tired of playing Mass Effect and I really enjoyed it. It's got more plot twists than any other anime I've ever seen without seeming too contrived or far-fetched. Overall, it's very well done and I would recommend it to anyone.
Due to my slow posting of late this is kind of old news, but apparently Blizzard and Activision have merged. I don't really understand this one myself. Blizzard has to be doing fine on it's own and these two companies don't make games that compete in the same genre so neither is eliminating a competitor through this either. Speaking of Blizzard however, the latest J!NX newsletter had some neat swag in it. Personally, I like the Warcraft Tanks...You're Welcome T-Shirt(3XL -_^) and the Horde Keychain.
VG Cats did this hilarious flash video to the ending theme of the game Portals (Still Alive). You can see it via the VG Cats link on the left side of the page. They tend to not update too often so it should be on the main page for awhile yet. I'll add the final ending theme of Gundam SEED and "Still Alive" to the music player as soon as I clear up some space to do so. Both are quality.
Lastly, I'll leave you with this World of Warcraft ad...featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme...in French.
Fair warning: this is going to be a long post. So, I started and finished Mass Effect in about 20 hours. This playthrough included mostly just the main story and some of the
most obvious side quests. The story is great and the style is very cinematic on the whole and makes you feel like you're playing a movie. The added touch that every single line of
dialogue in the game is voice acted is the icing on the cake for me. That's why I bought this game and part of the reason I'm playing through again, the spoken dialogue is just so
well done. However, I will admit that for most of both my playthroughs I've played on Casual because dying repeatedly after unskippable cutscenes is annoying, especially on your
first playthrough when you're anxious to move the story along. Overall, it exceeded my expectations and I'm currently working on additional playthroughs for Achievements.
In addition to Mass Effect I also picked up the Halo 3 Soundtrack on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and it is also just as incredible as I thought it would be and I've added a
couple tracks from the soundtrack to the music player for your listening pleasure.
In other news, Sony is apparently changing its ad company. Personally, I think this is long overdue. Sony's ads have
seemed like they're created by a bunch of tripped out drug addicts for years and I think that almost any company other than the one they have will serve them better. Lastly, I will
leave you with my opinion of reality TV shows.
So, Penny Arcade has rolled out a new feature that allows you to order an 11x7 print of just about any comic they've ever done. While I understand it's a fairly shameless way
to make money, it's cool as hell. And once again, since I suck to Christmas shop for, might I recommend a print of
this comic. Lastly, I'll leave you with a little quote from Tim Buckley's review of Mass Effect that I found awesomely
funny.
Sometimes I find myself surprised at what they let you decide to do. On more than one occasion when making these choices I've though to myself "Nah, I'll just say this, the game wouldn't let me actually be that much of an asshol-- oh shit, I did just execute that hostage." ~Tim Buckley
With the release of Mass Effect less than a week away, Bioware has released a new trailer for the game that somehow manages to whet my appetite for it even more.
People always say that I'm a hard person to shop for at Christmas because I tend to buy everything that I want as soon as it comes out. I admit that I'm very guilty of this, but to help all you friends and family out there I present to you two
sets of Ctrl+Alt+Del refrigerator magnets that I would never buy myself. Shop away.
Lastly, I would like to leave you with a wonderful quote from this evening's wonderful Dave Matthews Band concert at West Point.
"The amount of sweat that I produce for no good reason is almost disgusting...I may even have to admit that it IS disgusting." ~Dave Matthews
So, on Tom's advise, I went to Bungie.net and tried to figure out how to get my rank insignia and the other things you now see on the right to show up on my website. However,
I was only half successful with this. I was able to find the lines where it displays the images and links to the stats pages which is great, but I wasn't able to determine how my
rank insignia and the other icons are being generated. This is no doubt being done in a script that's not viewable in the page source and using database look-ups that I don't have
access to. So, you'll just have to take my word that I am a Colonel, Grade 1 and click the link if you don't believe me=P If anyone knows of a website similar to the Gamercard
one that I found that will do this for me, feel free to drop me a line and lemme know=)
P.S. Yes, I know that I'm directly linking to Bungie.net's images and that I shouldn't.
I found a neat little web site that allows you to create your Xbox Live Gamercard and keeps it updated with your most recent games and your Gamerscore and all that jazz,
so I decided to add that to my page. I also wanted to do a song of the day/week/month kind of thing and found a nifty music player to do just that.
However, do to the relatively small storage space on my UDS, this list will probably never be longer than about 5 songs unless I get motivated enough to set up a file server
somewhere...which is unlikely. Oh, and if it doesn't show up in IE7, get a real browser.
I also finished watching Black Lagoon today. While it's quite vulgar and doesn't have much of an overarching plot, I did thoroughly enjoy it. Strangely enough, I think
my favorite character in the series is Chan even though he's only in a few episodes. He manages to maintain his own sense of honor in the underworld even as the leader of
the Triads and I think that the path he walks is likely the same one that Rock will walk if he lives long enough. It doesn't hurt that he's a badass gunman...
Well, this is my first stab at a blog. I don't really have a direction for it other than the random musings that come to me on a day-to-day basis. In addition to my incoherent rantings, I'll probably talk about video games and anime and all the other nerdy aspects of my life. That's it for now, gonna go watch more of Black Lagoon because Josh roped me into watching it and now i'm a bit hooked. It's good so far, but there isn't much plot yet so I'm kind of waiting for that to pick up...
On another note...
Much to Marty's chagrin I've had Mp3's of the [Halo 3] soundtrack on my work machine for the last few months, he promised certain and vicious death were they to leave the office and if I put them on a portable music player and tried to leave, somehow he'd know, but the reason I needed them was for research. ~Franky, Bungie Weekly Update
/jealous. The Halo 3 soundtrack comes out November 20th, along with Mass Effect, and I can't wait to get my hands on both.
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